LCDs' bright future

The LCD is an antique technology by almost any measure. Liquid crystal material was first discovered in Austria in 1888, about 10 years before the invention of the cathode-ray tube. The first liquid crystal displays-in wristwatches-go back to the early 1970s. Today, we can make LCD flat-panel displays with diagonals of 70 inches or more. And yet we've hardly scratched the surface, so to speak, of what the technology can do.