The University had on its books the physics department's first graduate program called Chemical Physics. If you have a joint development, you determine who owns it and who doesnt, this kind of thing. Its behind Papa Johns Pizza.CRAWFORD: On Lincoln Street?DOANE: Yeah. We didn't think we could ever make a raser. I'll fund this company and Joel can be the financial officer." Incidentally, we've already started a company, we already know how to make windows. Even then, when I wrote the patent, I knew nothing about licensing. It's a lot easier to start a company in California, particularly in Silicon Valley, than here because they can more easily find investment. He reconfigured the company. I got each one to sit down and write up what they could do with their experimental technique to study these liquid crystals. Were there other companies the LCI was developing relationships with at this time?DOANE: [Those were among the first ones but I think by then, 3M and Polytronix were working with us in some way. I think he was able to keep everybody here and keep the place running. [End Part 2][Start Part 3]. I was very lucky to have such a guy in this little town. I just thought it was important to patent to establish it as your discovery or development with Kent State ownership. Probably within a year, we were selling signs. Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin Localisation : Country France, Region Auvergne-Rhne-Alpes, Department Isre.Available Information : Postal address, Phone number, Fax number, Website, Email address, Mayor, Geographical coordinates, Population, Altitude, Area, Weather and Hotel.Nearby cities and villages : Corbelin, Granieu and Brgnier-Cordon. Hopefully, things will take a turn for the better soon. I'm not sure why, but he decided not to patent this through the University, even though there was developmental research at the University in the Liquid Crystal Institute. What kind of work were you planning on doing with NMR?DOANE: We started out on a number of different topics. In 2008, Simon Property Group pumped millions into a major interior renovation for Town Center at Cobb as a way to boost sales. I was concerned at the time as I really didn't know how we would fit into the display world. The Timex contract was with the University. However, when I came in '65, they had already advanced that to a solid-state physics program and were in the process of moving it to a standard physics program for all areas of physics. I thought, "Here comes Jim Fergason again! [Laugh] I thought that was a great hire because the Institute really needed somebody who was doing applied work. Want to contact the Administration of Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin? I just told the dean I didn't know what I could do. 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. Of course, the military got into it very significantly later, and a lot of my success in running the Institute was supported by the military.CRAWFORD: Would you say that individuals in the Institute really saw these kinds of issues, like building a watch face, the work with temperature sensors, or other kinds ofbecause I think some of that military funding was exploring the utility of liquid crystals as different kinds of detectors and so forth. Those were pretty much my early years in a nutshell.CRAWFORD: What was it that attracted you to radio?DOANE: I'm not really sure. To do science, you have to fund it. A guy in England named George Gray, who Glenn had worked with. Shortly after that, we had a project with a company outside the beltway in Washington DC that had a defense contract to develop some very secret thing. Also, I think it forces people, particularly in governments, to look at how we deal with diseases. But he wound up going to General Motors. CRAWFORD: If I understood you correctly, a spin-off company doesn't necessarily mean more financial benefit for a university than licensing does. The State of Ohio money helped it with manufacturing. [Laugh] The agreements we got were often really helpful to us. I wanted to get him a position in physics. Also, it involved radio frequencies, something I was really familiar with. Each room has its own private bath. It was called nuclear spin pumping. I knew the people, the issues, what the government needed.CRAWFORD: How important would you say knowing people in government and funding agencies is?DOANE: Extremely important. Also, I needed to convince the University to do it, too, because the University enjoyed making money off of licensing. That may have been what caught their attention. Another problem at that time, which isn't an issue anymore, was having the right kind of liquid crystal material to use it with. Event starts on Sunday, 30 April 2023 and happening at Brandon Town Center Mall, Brandon, FL. I was really excited about that because I was the only one in physics who had any interest in liquid crystals at that time. It's a lot more than just doing science. It takes a lot of money to start a company, particularly in a new technology. In France, there was a large group at Orsay near Paris. DOANE: Being retired, COVID had far less effect on me than others. Dr. Doane, thanks for agreeing to speak to me again.J. I'm sure I had considered this because I really had to look at an area of physics in which I could support our family. When you put it between two sheets of plastic, it can assume two different types of contrasting visual textures. Applications did not come until people started working with them. "Maybe someday in the future, we'll understand this." The property is located just off the I-75, walking distance to KSU football field, Towncenter Mall, many restaurants and new development in the area. Of course, we pay for it, but it's nice to have that facility available, and it's nice for them to make it available.CRAWFORD: Did Kent Displays then, and does it now, send its own people to use the facilities? In the US there were some other smaller groups working on displays and active matrix technology. [Laugh] While liquid crystals could get that feature, it had a very short temperature range. UPDATE 10/2/17 @ 9:46 p.m. Then, in RCA, there was a group. I wanted to start off just asking some background questions. We had to develop courses. Town Center at Cobb October 13, 2010. But I had no problems with Jim, other than the fact that he just didn't meld well with the academic environment he was working in. We are not looking for the development of marketable products. The name of the company who manufactures this now and markets it is Ebulent [and its CEO is Xiao-Yang Huang]. But when I married Shirley, she knew from the very beginning I wanted to go back to graduate school. And they decided to go with a twist cell. Jim Fergason and Glenn Brown together could have helped in that issue. KSU Center View map 3333 Busbee Dr NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144 https://events.kennesaw.edu/venues/ksu-center.php Place Details Type Kennesaw Campus 0 People follow this place Follow Place Upcoming Events (2) PACT Act: Counseling for all Disability Claims Tue, Apr 4, 2023 10am to 3pm KSU Center, Rooms 300 & 400 New Training & Workshops There was just nothing. When I lectured, even in elementary physics, I paid a lot of attention to demonstrations, rather than standing up at the blackboard. CRAWFORD: I believe that paper came out in 1957. It was focused on basic research, and it was a lot of money. This was a prime incentive in forming Kent Displays.This new reflective technology came about when early on, the Xerox group was working on things called cholesteric liquid crystals. Cookie Notice Please include proper citation and credit for use of this item. Universities don't like to get too involved in this business. Crises aren't always that bad in the sense that they can move things along and force people to look at other ways. But primarily USC and Kent State carried the ball in this program.. We met a lot and really worked closely together. #enr #mthanisation #gazvert #nergierenouvelable #enr #mthanisation #gazvert #nergierenouvelable I stopped and looked at it. It can be green, red, whatever you want it to be. Did you and Fergason remain friends?DOANE: Yes, I didn't have any problem with Jim. CRAWFORD: It sounds like you're saying it's partly a cultural thing.DOANE: Yes. Instead, research is directed toward finding scientific knowledge. 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. It was sort of an informal, gradual retirement. I wanted the physics department and Kent State University to have something they could hang their hats on. I do remember Tektronix because I was surprised they did that. I think it was the University of Utah, or some school in Utah, had political influence in Congress and was able to get awarded what's called pork-barrel money. He was a nice guy [and a very capable researcher].CRAWFORD: You mentioned that at the time, Schadt and Helfrich were working on display cells and so forth, and that there were a number of different options for making displays. I did have a high school teacher, [Harley Rutledge], who was right out of college and had a degree in physics. Also, the US. They should've had a lot more. Do source of income protections exist for me at the state level in Georgia? We needed to be working with another university on polymers. In this case the university will make little or no up-front money from the license but it has value otherwise in creating local industry that benefits the university in a variety of ways, creating jobs for students, attracting new students, endowments, PR etc.] The University was putting money into it that had been arranged earlier, and it looked like it wasn't going anywhere as it set by itself apart from the research campus.CRAWFORD: Did you want to take over as director? But I think when I look around the country, it's had some good and some bad points. CRAWFORD: Do you have a sense of why that was?DOANE: I don't know. Public accommodations protections include being unfairly refused services or entry to or from places accessible to the public (retail stores, restaurants, parks, hotels, etc). There was Fergason's work at Westinghouse. From Akron University [we have hired students with expertise in polymers. We had a big handicap here at Kent State because there was no electrical engineering department at Kent at that time. I just knew Jim was working on this stuff. There was stuff going on like that.CRAWFORD: Was this Hughes Laboratory?DOANE: No, it was not Hughes. We became so well-known in Japan and Asia, you could go over to Asia and they knew about Kent State but learned about Cleveland only because they had to fly into it to get here. That's really a benefit for [Kent Displays]. 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. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about why you decided to establish Kent Displays. It was just a great display to start high volume manufacturing. I, with my students and postdocs even discovered some unique phase properties with magnetic resonance that could not be observed any other way; that sort of stuff. Do you think that's useful for science?DOANE: It happens because universities have a need to be open which is not true for industry. I thought Jim did a nice job getting this program off the ground. That was what got us into flexible plastic substrates. After a while, NSF support began to fall off. It's unclear how the company plans to revitalize the mall or if . Today he is CEO taking the company into new exciting directions with new products. That wasn't in my interest at all. Time zone of Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin. That was what really got the company off the ground. DOANE: It can mean several things. What was going on with the Liquid Crystal Institute going into the 70s? I didn't like the way this ended up.CRAWFORD: Just to play devil's advocate, would it be fair to say that this was a product of maybe the decision to have the LCI off-campus? At that point, I went to the University of Akron, where they had a polymer program, and I found a group over there headed by Frank Harris that really wanted to do this. I had an NIH grant on biological membranes (that are also liquid crystalline) as well. We've talked a little bit about how the academic and industrial worlds were in some ways separate universes. It was very fundamental research. While I was trying to think of a polite way to say no, he said, "Only reason I ask is that I'm in a Methodist church, and I've been organizing a softball team. It was a consumer product. It was a big effort for that time.CRAWFORD: Did that include what Akron and Case were doing?DOANE: These were our expenditures in Kent. But the nice thing about it is, you can erase it and use it over again. Good morning, Dr. Doane. 1 hour from Salina. But the university can have ownership of patents that industry needs. Or are you working with scientists at the LCI?DOANE: Yes, today we use those facilities. That's really how I got into physics.CRAWFORD: Did you end up working with that professor?DOANE: Here's how all of that went. But it could've been that attitude of distancing research from industry caused the Institute to be in such a bad spot when I took over. I told them I would do it if I could have a few positions with the promise that I would bring in some federal support for the program. And of course, after they graduated from high school, they went to college, and I didn't see them then, either. In order to get color, you have to filter the light through red, green, and blue filters, and those filters absorb a lot of light. Basically university research on liquid crystal materials and industrial research on liquid crystal displays were disconnected. I was determined to do that, and at first, I tried to do it at a lower cost [to better attract investment]. Win over prospective landlords with your smart budgeting. However, since then, I retired in '96, and around 2010 or so, they moved the faculty in Chemical Physics into the various departments, like physics and chemistry. I think the University gave him a lot of support to start this program. 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. CRAWFORD: But it seems like a shift from a sign that's in a public space that can be changed when needed versus a personal writing device. For more information, please see our 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. But when it's on campus, that's an issue you have. [Laugh]CRAWFORD: Is there anything else you want to say with regard to Kent Displays?DOANE: I don't think so. I convinced them to contribute to this. I don't think they had any effect on the Institute or what it was doing. It's just recognition that somebody saw what you were doing. When Jim's company began to fail, Hoffmann-La Roche wanted to buy the patent from him. I'm not so sure that Glenn's attitude was really ever truly workable, except that it may have worked generally for universities back then. I wonder if you could say a little bit about the nature of the problem, that he didnt have a PhD. They benefit each other mutually. Another thing I discovered at this meeting was that I was the only person there from a university. Also, of course, the University would get a royalty. But it was a hot new field, and I thought it was a better way to go. The company has been improving on this over the years. Industry is the opposite in the sense that they don't want other people to know the product they are developing. It's not like the other kinds of displays that have to be electronically refreshed over and over as well as require a backlight. At that time, I know MIT looked at it that way, so I tried to focus Kent State in that direction, too. Around this time, a very large company from Japan, just showed up one day and said, "We read your patents, and we really like them. ALCOM was to combine science and technology where applications are important. But what a distraction that was, taking considerable time away from company development.That's the thing about patents: a patent doesn't help you much unless you protect it. There was Dave Johnson in the physics department, who was doing very nice work on calorimetry, the thermodynamics of liquid crystals. [Laugh]CRAWFORD: Was that the primary reason the company decided to focus on the Boogie Board, because it was simple?DOANE: It was the easiest thing to make on a manufacturing line because you didn't have to pattern [the electrodes] or anything. That focused the company right there. CRAWFORD: Was there a sense at that time in the late 60s and the 70s, was there a sense that academic science was a different world than industrial science?DOANE: Yes. 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