Plasma Television History

Plasma TV History

For most of its time, it was a solution looking for a problem," says Larry Weber (BSEE '69, MSEE '71, PhD '75) of the technology he has dedicated his professional life to. Today that "solution"—the amazing plasma display panel, invented at the University of Illinois in 1964—seems to have finally found the problem (not to mention the goldmine) it always deserved: carrying high-definition television (HDTV) into millions of homes.

Weber's 60-inch plasma display, a prototype he developed for Matsushita (bearing the Panasonic label), combines the large size and superb resolution necessary for HDTV with the convenience of thinness. You can even hang it on your wall. In fact, one of these marvels hangs on the wall of Weber's upstate New York company, Plasmaco, an R & D arm of Matsushita. When you see it, you'll know why the Society for Information Display gave Weber its highest award in 2000 for his contributions to plasma displays.

In its "on" state, a plasma cell actually flickers thousands of times per second. Every time the ac sustain voltage reverses polarity, its corresponding field within the cell realigns with an alternating "wall voltage" emanating from the glass, creating a total cell voltage sufficient to ignite the discharge. A new wall voltage of opposite polarity then begins to build up until it cancels the cell voltage, extinguishing the discharge, and a new cycle begins.

Although the first patent covering the fundamental operation and applications of the plasma display panel was not granted until 1971 ("one of the most complete applications I think I've ever done," recalls Scarpelli), U of I began collecting on the technology as early as 1967. That year U of I sold an exclusive license to the Owens-Illinois glass company, which would deliver the first commercial-grade "Digivue" displays for use in PLATO in 1971.

IBM took an early interest as well, and the lure of Big Blue's prestige and deep pockets forced Merriam and Alpert into some ticklish negotiations between the two corporate players, with the happy result that U of I collected a million dollars from IBM in exchange for another license. That license would lead in 1983 to the IBM 3290 Information Panel, "the industry's first mass-produced, large-screen plasma display terminal for commercial use," according to an IBM advertisement.

TV companies including RCA, Zenith, and General Electric took notice of early press reports about plasma displays as potential "hang-on-the-wall" TVs. Some took out licenses, but they all sent visitors to see what was happening at CERL. Zenith provided the phosphors for Edward Stredde's (BSEE '66, MSEE '68) master's work on a multicolor plasma display.

After finishing his PhD in 1975 with a dissertation on the discharge dynamics of plasma displays, Weber joined the CERL staff and began consulting to U.S. companies interested in such commercial applications of the Illinois technology.

Japanese companies were among the first to take out licenses and begin their own plasma display research, enjoying the support and encouragement of NHK, the government broadcasting system that had advocated HDTV as early as the 1960s. Among the prominent Japanese engineers who visited CERL to study plasma displays was Heiji Uchiike, now of Saga University. Uchiike spent a year at CERL in the early days of the plasma display and has gone on to train many of the top plasma engineers in Japan. Japanese companies who sent visitors to CERL, many of them staying for extended periods, include Fujitsu, Hitachi, Matsushita, Sony, NEC, and even NHK. These companies, especially Fujitsu, have made important developments based on the fundamental ideas that came out of Illinois.

Bitzer noted that the Japanese also saw plasma as an answer to the problem of displaying their Kanji script, something the Western alphanumeric computer displays of the early 1960s could not do. So plasma panels became widely used in Japan for cash registers, meters, and public signs.

Owens-Illinois had sunk millions into manufacturing plasma displays when it gave up on the business and sold its plasma division in the 1970s. U.S. TV companies didn't last long after they came to understand the investment it would take to make plasma competitive with cathode ray tubes. Computer companies stuck it out until 1987, when IBM became the last major U.S. company to dump its commercial plasma display business. That left only the Pentagon to sustain a small but very lucrative plasma display industry in the U.S.

Plasmaco was also a U of I project in technology commercialization. Weber remained on the CERL staff while serving as chief technical officer of the company, and many Plasmaco staff visited CERL for training. The university licensed Plasmaco to use its plasma technology, which now included energy-efficient driving circuitry developed by Weber himself. (Every plasma TV on the market now incorporates Weber's contributions, which are the subject of an ongoing legal dispute between U of I and Fujitsu.)

In 1990, Weber moved to New York and assumed full-time duties at the new company, which scraped by producing monochrome plasma computer displays until 1993. But by that time, liquid crystal displays had achieved color and conquered the market. Plasmaco now faced foreclosure, and the company's investors shook up the top management, making Weber president and CEO and forcing him to fire half his staff. "Things got very ugly with all the creditors that were after us," recalled Weber. "The sheriff was knocking at my door because we couldn't even show up for court. The lawyers wouldn't represent us because we hadn't paid them."

Weber convinced a banker to lend him $80,000 for components to begin developing a color display. By the last day of a 1994 industry convention in San Jose, CA, he was able to rig a static display of colored stripes that impressed people with its brightness and contrast ratio. Weber then began a joint development program with Matsushita, which bought Plasmaco in 1996 for $26 million, leaving Weber in his position as president. Weber hired his old student Bill Schindler (MSEE '82) to manage Plasmaco's 60-inch prototype project, unveiled in 1999 and widely agreed to have the best contrast ratio in the industry.

If you sit 10 feet away from a 36-inch regular TV, Weber explains, you can't tell the difference between a normal picture and the high-definition standard toward which the TV industry is moving. You could widen the cathode ray tube—the venerable device that gave TV its nickname "The Tube"—to the 60 or more inches required to see a one-millimeter pixel at 10 feet. But the tube can't get wider without getting deeper, so you would have to knock out a door and use a forklift to get a big one into your living room. Projection systems have spatial limitations of their own caused by the placement of the projector and screen, and they require a dark room for good results. Liquid crystal displays have the advantage of thinness (that's why they are great for laptops), but they are not as bright as plasma displays, they can't yet be made as wide, and their pictures disappear when viewed from the side.