10 Information: Displays and Memory Devices (1981–2007)

Ovshinsky's most important energy technologies, thin-film solar cells and NiMH batteries, were major commercial successes. But his information technologies—which were more radically innovative and based on his most original discoveries, the switching effects he first observed in the early 1960s—failed to realize their full commercial potential for ECD. The flat panel displays that Ovshinsky had envisioned in 1968, and which ECD's subsidiary OIS (Optical Imaging Systems) contributed greatly to developing, ended up enriching other companies. Ovonic optical memories, such as rewritable CDs and DVDs, enjoyed a period of commercial success but again mostly profited others. And while many in the semiconductor industry recognized the enormous promise of Ovshinsky's electrical phase-change memory, it lay dormant for years because it was not considered commercially viable. Finally, his innovative cognitive computer, based on a further extension of his phase-change technology, never advanced beyond its research phase.