Nobody knew who he was because he was never there. An oral history interview with J. William Doane, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Emeritus Director of the Liquid Crystal Institute (LCI) at Kent State University, and Co-Founder and Senior Advisor at Kent Displays, Inc., in Kent, Ohio. [Laugh] When we had our meetings and discussions, I always wanted to see something, not just a bunch of words and slides. One, you can have meetings, exchange ideas and give lectures back and forth. There were also new types of liquid crystal display technologies created that were commercialized. What did it mean to you to receive these awards?DOANE: It's kind of nice. CRAWFORD: In 2007, you received another award, the Slottow-Owaki Prize from the Society of Information Displays, and this is an award for your contribution to the education and training of students and professionals in the field of information display. Black Friday shoppers at Town Center mall. They wanted something you could wear, could see very clearly, and not have to change the battery. I didn't know what I could contribute. ]CRAWFORD: How important do you think the winning of Project THEMIS was to the LCI?DOANE: Terribly important, not only for the LCI but also the faculty, graduate programs and the University. That was what really got the company off the ground and involved in marketing and sales that had to be developed.CRAWFORD: Had the company done any test marketing or user studies?DOANE: No, it really didn't have much in the way of marketing. It was so secret, I never knew what it was, but we were given the contract to develop the display for it. WILLIAM DOANE: Well, thank you for inviting me.CRAWFORD: My pleasure. I thought about it for a short while and agreed. You can learn more about the company by talking with Asad. The Knesset really liked these signs because they fit well with the religious beliefs because they didn't require any power to retain an image on the screen. Immediately after we started Kent Displays, Inc., other faculty, students and postdocs got the message and said, "Maybe we should do this." Incidentally, we've already started a company, we already know how to make windows. The State of Ohio money helped it with manufacturing. Today's date is Monday, August 16th, 2021. It has a writing texture similar to paper. But they couldn't do this with Jim Fergason's patent. They were not interested in any applied aspects. But I think one of the main reasons was that I wanted to leave the Institute in good shape for the new director. This turned out to be a big problem, actually.CRAWFORD: Id be happy to hear. I really appreciate you sharing your reflections.DOANE: Thank you very much. DOANE: I would say it was '83 maybe, something like that. Saupe, being in the Institute off campus, away from the physics department, was never around in physics. John was marvelous at moving these materials forward. This would give the University the opportunity to license it off to other companies for other kinds of display applications besides signs. I, with the help of Bill Manning, were finally able to convince the University to grant a license to this technology. John West is the one to talk about that.CRAWFORD: He took over as director after you, correct?DOANE: He did [at a time when the new building was being built]. Also researchers at Kent were not developing material for displays, but they could have been.] Location! At the time I happened to be on a board of directors for a display company in Troy, Michigan. After Senior Research Fellows served in that position for a while, they found themselves directing graduate students and doing almost the same things as university professors do. As I understand Phil, this display technology you're looking at right there on your cell phone is from one of our students.CRAWFORD: For the audio, you're showing me an Apple iPhone. CRAWFORD: Some work that was field-specific was important for the field, then the polymer dispersion had broader recognition.DOANE: [I was amazed at how it caught on scientifically in the field of liquid crystal research. And to give the University some visibility, and give the faculty visibility so they could get grants and stuff. I'm not sure what expertise he'd gained at his former employment, but he was a good one to guide a company that had to learn to do almost everything from manufacturing to sales. I'm an Associate Professor and Historian of Science in the Department of History at Kent State University. ]CRAWFORD: One of the themes I'm getting from your answers is, you seem to have a very open perspective in the sense of looking for opportunities, building connections, literally connecting the physics and chemistry departments on campus. Nearby cities and villages : Corbelin, Granieu and Brgnier-Cordon. I brought him to Kent to work on it in my lab. There was even some interest in Europe, and here was some licensing there, too. They'd come here, we'd go there, we'd meet in various places, help one another with various projects. My Toy Chest. The writing can stay there forever if desired. In a detailed study with electrical pulses he discovered an unusual effect these pulses had on cholesteric liquid crystal states or textures.] Another problem at that time, which isn't an issue anymore, was having the right kind of liquid crystal material to use it with. Request More Information. That was my focus at that time. CRAWFORD: But students still get their PhD in chemical physics?DOANE: As I understand it, they do [but it may now be broadened to material sciences. But I'm still on the board of the company, and they kindly give me a little office here, let me come in and talk to people. © 2023 Kent State University All rights reserved. You don't have to wad it up and throw it away. The University certainly had the authority now to own a patent, and Gene Wenninger and I had to figure out how to manage all that. As a university, we may have, at one time, been the largest contributor to talks and demonstrations at those Society conferences. Its called that because it can be found in the cholesterol of living systems. There are a lot of components to a display. That may have been what caught their attention. It really didn't have a lot to do with my nuclear spin pumping and my double resonance experiments [other than we were both working with solid crystals]. There was enough space between there that we could sandwich a small building and put together a number of research labs.CRAWFORD: I've heard about this building, and I can appreciate the practicality of being between physics and chemistry, but also the metaphorical meaning of it of liquid crystals as kind of a substance in the space between physics and chemistry. Did you and Fergason remain friends?DOANE: Yes, I didn't have any problem with Jim. Then, Hughes Research in Malibu California got involved because at that time, Hughes was owned by General Motors. I think the University gave him a lot of support to start this program. My parents were very supportive of that and helped me with it. We can pick up tomorrow. Industry is the opposite in the sense that they don't want other people to know the product they are developing. CRAWFORD: I could see advantages of it being a little bit outside of the university structure, but is this maybe a cautionary tale, that the flip side of having that freedom is that it can be taken advantage of?DOANE: I can see that point of view, absolutely. Town Center at Cobb 55 Shopping Malls By 646lorit Stores range from upscale Abercrombie to the $7.99 store. Before noon on the day it was launched, Amazon was calling up and wanting more. There, he got involved with temperature sensors and stuff. Also, there were a lot of students involved. He went with Fergason, actually, when he left to start his company. It's very different today than back then.CRAWFORD: When the company first started, it didn't have a manufacturing line. CONNECT WITH THE LOCAL REAL ESTATE ADVISOR. That was a discovery that turned out to be not only of scientific interest but also ended up in many applications. But the champion ended up being Japan. Also, Kent had just started its PhD program in solid-state physics, and I just wanted it to grow from solid-state physics to physics in general, which it did. I had a friend at MIT who told me that was what they liked to do at MIT, get faculty, post-docs, and students to be entrepreneurs to spin off the technology. DOANE: I really had some wonderful students. [Laugh] DOANE: [Laugh] Well, this was typical Glenn, it turns out. CRAWFORD: We talked yesterday about some of the difficulties around Fergason's patenting ventures, and you had said that throughout the 70s, you were doing primarily basic research and weren't really working on applications. It really got into the writing experience, as well as advancing it to fit this into digital technology, how to do it in color, things like that. We haven't talked a lot about your approach to education and training students. When Al Green joined we already had this manufacturing line. I wanted to establish a nice relationship with industry, learn what they were doing and how we could interact with them. But the program did not last long as better ways to detect cancer evolved. I wanted to start off just asking some background questions. I found an investor, which I needed because it was going to be expensive to do it, and I wanted to set an example so other people at the University would do it. It really was a part of the University, yet set apart from the university research campus. Applications did not come until people started working with them. At that particular time, my research was focused on nuclear magnetic resonance of liquid crystals. I saw it from the point of view of just having something that we can hang our hat on that we were in the display business. DARPA was funding research in the company very well. In this other article he was interviewed for, which was talking about the work that was being done on displays with watch faces, calculators, and so forth, Dr. Franklin said, in the context of this article, "Research at the Institute here in Kent is not motivated by entrepreneurship. Under Doane, the LCI received significant funding from state, federal, and corporate sources including Project THEMIS, DARPA, and the National Science Foundation. The written line is erased electrically by simply pressing a button whereby the cholesteric liquid crystal is electrically switched from its color reflective state to its background state. ]CRAWFORD: The departments have their own hiring plans and needs.DOANE: Departments have their own agenda and plans. You need a very bright backlight behind it to see a color image. Further, patents have a limited lifetime.] She was fluent in German and Spanish. Occasionally, when I'd see him in the Institute, he'd talk about displays, but I really didn't know how he got into it. In a liquid crystal display there are color filters. Fergason got interested in display development. Town Center at Cobb October 13, 2010. We needed to be working with another university on polymers. This comes from a letter he wrote to an Associate Provost Bernard Hall at Kent State in September 1969. McGrath and Silvidi would be there. At that time, both of our work was focused on solid crystalline materials. But you can also make it so that the temperature doesn't change the color. One, he filled with Jim Fergason. But, eventually, we were able to come up with a plan that convinced them to grant a license and we formed KDI. I began to explore other avenues of funding around that time. This unique feature makes possible all sorts of low power, color reflective display applications. I'm stepping ahead a little bit, but after a few years when Glenn appointed me as associate director or whatever the title was, the first thing I did was go to the dean of arts and sciences and say, "I'd like to build a building on the research campus for liquid crystal research." I think this is the only example I know of where this has happened, where two different countries have a different patent ownership. The only thing it did was shut us down for a while. And they're still made today. Aleks Gilbert. They should've had a lot more. And it was nice working with the folks at Case and Akron, too. DOANE: I think it was a variety of things. It just made for a nice, cohesive research program. The two seemed isolated from each other. CRAWFORD: You talked a lot about your work building a program at Kent State. You really need to negotiate a license with us to manufacture." DOANE: I think that may be one of my best contributions, actually.CRAWFORD: Could that be seen as pioneering? Turns out, it was extremely important because later on, when we came to the ALCOM [Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials] Center, that was extremely valuable.CRAWFORD: Why was that?DOANE: At that time NSF started a new program for Science and Technology Centers, and it was a new direction for NSF. That was really what the objective of ALCOM was, to make a connection between basic research and the economy. At that time, he had written a review paper on liquid crystals. I didn't know much about writing patents. Then, when it came time to graduate, I had to start looking at places to go and things to do. I remember earlier, I wanted to make a radio. Glenn learned that he wanted to immigrate, and Glenn wanted to see if he could get him. CRAWFORD: Did Kent Displays get funding from ALCOM?DOANE: No. I was operating at two different radio frequencies at the same time. But it would've been nice [to have kept Fegasons industrial pursuit linked in a friendly way with the academic pursuit of the institute such that his industry could have survived. Even today, we make use of universities, which is very helpful in this regard. New York Nails. What was going on with the Liquid Crystal Institute going into the 70s? There were three other universities involved. However, from another point of view, it never hurts to have a crisis because it causes people to think other ways. In the first ones, there were some industrial people there. The other texture is transparent. I need a softball player." The company has been improving on this over the years. [There's a faculty member at Kent, Phil Bos that I'd like for you to interview.] Sure enough, it was a great compound because I learned right awayI hadn't done but one experiment on this, and already I could see that these really were [unique]. And they decided to go with a twist cell. No. I was born in the sandhills of Western Nebraska, out in the country in a sod house, built by my father. The written image stays there forever without any power. I know you established the company in 1993, and you talked a little bit about how you came in contact with Bill Manning and started working with him. The ALCOM Center gets started in 1991. Bravo aux quipes pour ce nouveau projet. CRAWFORD: I'm wondering about the relationship between Kent Displays and the Liquid Crystal [Institute]. I thought it was a way to help graduate research.CRAWFORD: When you said you wanted to tie the faculty together, it's really thinking in terms of building the University, building the graduate program. The name of the company who manufactures this now and markets it is Ebulent [and its CEO is Xiao-Yang Huang]. CRAWFORD: If I understood you correctly, a spin-off company doesn't necessarily mean more financial benefit for a university than licensing does. For example, without that, I probably couldn't even have convinced Rudy Butler to build this building and centralize the effort on the research campus. DOANE: Campus is a great place to walk and ride bikes, but I don't like to go there when it is shut down because it's so depressing to me.CRAWFORD: And that's a really good example of what you were saying about how the pandemic has impacted social interactions. To do this, he had to have a lot of support from the University. Theoretically, you could make what was called a raser. Xerox was studying its electro-optical properties. Even at that time, there was some discussion of, "What really are these things? What are you doing here?" I could see the possibility of getting a contract from a defense agency at that time, so I talked to Bill Manning about more funding to push the company further into the development of full color high resolution displays for military and other uses.. Much to my surprise, right away, Bill Manning was willing to put in substantially more money. [Laugh]CRAWFORD: Did he ask you if you played softball? And it was very different, a new way of making droplets and liquid crystals, a very simple way to do it. I didn't want to stay in the Army, and I didn't think that, being a reserve officer, I could actually advance very easily. Looking back on it, I'm not sure why he hired Fergason in the first place. The Japanese had really gotten it off the ground. He was just getting into it.CRAWFORD: At this meeting, was he just mentioning this as [inaudible]DOANE: I don't recall all the details of that meeting but I am sure he must have because that's where it hit me that this seemed to be a neat field. 2 hours from Kansas City. I could do what I wanted to do. Town Center at Cobb is Northwest Atlanta's main shopping destination. [Laugh] CRAWFORD: Did you see patenting as a way of kind of signaling that the Institute was moving into applied research?DOANE: No, I didn't see it from that point of view. The College of Wooster is down the road, and we've had a lot of students from there. I took this display to a meeting of the Society for Information Displays, the first time I'd ever been to one of those display meetings. listen here. "DOANE: He's right.CRAWFORD: That captures the spirit of the Institute at the time?DOANE: Oh, yeah. That event, right there, guided my life. I wonder if you could say a little bit about that. Further electrical engineers at Akron or Case did not have that expertise or interest.