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. It wasn't just because of this that it wound up in Japan, Kent was only a small part of the problem. CRAWFORD: I want to circle back to the late 80s. And then you can only see a nice image indoors. [Laugh] There are all sorts of enticements. Do you see yourself as a pioneer in scientific or technological entrepreneurship? DOANE: Yes. [Because NSF funded each principal investigator separately, it had the effect of decentralizing the liquid crystal research effort on campus. The other reason was, at that time, I'd been at Kent State 31 years, and the University had what they called a five-year buyout plan which was an incentive. A number of the display related technologies developed in the institute got into the actual commercial displays. It's a film that goes on a liquid crystal display so you can see it at a very wide angle. Universities, by nature, like to be open and publish their research.] But I'd say from Kent State University's point of view, it was the visibility in the science field. 220 Station Ln NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144 | Zillow Kennesaw GA For Rent Apply Price Price Range Minimum - Maximum Apply Beds & Baths Bedrooms Bathrooms Apply Home Type Deselect All Houses Apartments/Condos/Co-ops Townhomes Apply More filters Location! I began to see a problem with the liquid crystal field, all of the display work was being done in industry, and all these people were going to these display society meetings, while the liquid crystal materials people doing basic research were going to the International Liquid Crystal Society. This open floor plan and dual decks-front and back offer room for entertaining and family fun. A successful company generates royalties for the university They build upon each other.] And because he was very interested in applications, I believe he was [more entrepreneurially oriented]. 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. Of course, it can involve development agreements and also licensing. Thinking about the generation of young people becoming scientists today, could you talk about what's involved in being a scientist? Did you and Fergason remain friends?DOANE: Yes, I didn't have any problem with Jim. I didn't think we had a chance in hell of getting this thing because it was thrown together so fast. The technology and economic benefit wound up in Japan [and ultimately Korea and China].CRAWFORD: It was a real lost opportunity.DOANE: Oh, big-time. Request More Information. I just wanted to get it involved in the graduate programs. It was a beautiful country. That focused the company right there. DOANE: I don't know how you define a pioneer, but I would say that my primary contributions, while I've published a lot and written a lot of patents, was more in working with others, getting others involved, building a program for Kent State University. [Laugh] [You can also find yourself in expensive court battles trying to defend it. It was doing very well then to give a new director time to settle in before ALCOM ended.CRAWFORD: Did you ever consider just stepping down as director and going back to doing research as a faculty member?DOANE: Back then, you could retire, and after you were retired for so many years, you could run the Institute again. As soon as I met Sardari, I talked him into synthesizing a liquid crystal I could use with magnetic resonance. CRAWFORD: Well, I think we should maybe take a break. CRAWFORD: When he did talk about applications, it was mostly in cancer detection work with breast cancer and so forth, and less about the work on displays and stuff. He went with Fergason, actually, when he left to start his company. The Timex contract was with the University. 8 hours from Denver, CO. 8 hours from Dallas, TX. Somehow, I just thought it was important for our program to do that. He said he got a call from a guy in the Air Force he knew, and they wanted to explore liquid crystals. In '65, when I was interviewing for the positions, there was already some work going on here and there around the country. It's called the active matrix. You can't have any dust particles around. There were also new types of liquid crystal display technologies created that were commercialized. It wasn't easy for the company to do all that. But I always had somebody else running the company. After he got his degree, he worked in industry, and it could've been that he just didn't understand academia. It was focused on basic research, and it was a lot of money. Whether they saw that as an opportunity to get it from him, I'm not sure. At that time, I think he committed $20 million up front. Typically, they have those meetings in March. DOANE: Yeah. This browser is no longer supported. But that was the way Glenn wanted it. Chemistry hadn't had its graduate program very long before that. We discovered we could make a unique reflective display. I wanted to do just the opposite of what these guys did. In this case, the university licenses the patents generated by faculty and students back to them to start a company. What are you doing here?" As I understand it, Timex got a royalty-free license to use the technology.CRAWFORD: This has so many elements of the challenges of patenting in the university context, which is difficult. Could you tell us what that stands for?DOANE: Yes. That's what I did. Not long after he started, he began telling them about these polymer dispersions, and General Motors got very interested in these things for automobile applications. You mentioned GM and Tektronix. I wanted to get the Institute to an area where we could fund it, and the only way I could see funding at that time was to get some applied activity going on. Two miles from the noonday creek trail!Directions: Google, Waze. I retired in '96.CRAWFORD: KDI is Kent Displays, Incorporated.DOANE: Yes. Kitchen has beautiful knotty pine cabinets. [These beautiful displays have been a major contributor to todays social media for example. I hired her, and she was delighted to come. In the first ones, there were some industrial people there. When Al Green joined we already had this manufacturing line. Licensing, in general, I found not to be a very good business for a university. They didn't want to make displays, but they wanted to license it worldwide. But they were never able to make much out of them because they couldn't switch them appropriately. But I thought, "Maybe the Institute needed new direction." [Laugh] It was clear that it was really going to take off. Akron contributed really nicely to the display technology because with polymers, they could make things like retardation films, and Akron really got involved. I think Professor Saupe was the only one in the early stages who really had a professorship. Please contact the. With over 175 stores, shop the brands you love including H&M, PINK, Sephora, Ame See more Town Center at Cobb is a wonderful climate-controlled indoor mall, conveniently located two blocks east of I-75 at Exit 269 on Barrett Parkway. Fortunately, I was picked, as well as quite a few others, although not everybody but most. John West was very helpful on all of that stuff. University patenting was difficult for different reason, but from what I understand, I think around '65, '67, there was an individual in the federal government who was trying to make it easier for federal universities to patent research. However, I think it was the way universities operated at that particular time. Another company that was very involved with liquid crystal display work was Tektronix in Oregon. After I finished my two years in the Army, I wanted to go back to Missouri because I wanted to work with this professor named Nelson Duller.CRAWFORD: Was that the professor who hired you?DOANE: Yes, that was the professor who hired me. CRAWFORD: By secrets, youre talking about intellectual property?DOANE: [Yeah, primarily intellectual property but also research results. [Laugh] I had to try to tie all of these programs together to show how they could blend together. As a university, we may have, at one time, been the largest contributor to talks and demonstrations at those Society conferences. He got involved with a guy in the biology department to use liquid crystals to detect cancer. When I lectured, even in elementary physics, I paid a lot of attention to demonstrations, rather than standing up at the blackboard. But it was clear that it wasn't going to be a very big business, and I wasn't sure that Bill Manning would ever get that much enjoyment out of signs. This of course did not happen. It was a different approach for a university to deal with. He got very interested in these polymer dispersions and helped me with them. But my wife was very good at handling things by herself. He wanted it to be apart from the research campus, but for the research to be very basic. Is it based on the pressure?DOANE: The Boogie Board makes use of a type of liquid crystal that's extremely unique. Liquid Crystal Oral History: Doane, J. William (Transcript Only),. This gave high visibility to Kent State internationally. DOANE: Yeah. Also, the US. But after two years, passing all these candidacy exams, all this coursework, I talked to Shirley, and we thought maybe it would be the thing to do. CRAWFORD: Was that a consideration for you in making the decision, the job opportunities?DOANE: I don't remember. With ALCOM, we had at least 100 people back then, including the students, post-docs, faculty, and so on. We recapitalized the company and changed the name to Kent Displays, Incorporated. Our very first high-volume manufacturing line was supported by the state of Ohio. I could do what I wanted to do. I talked to a few people in the chemistry department, although I didn't have to do too much there because Glenn was a chemist. They said they wanted to fill a position, and they invited me to Kent to give a talk on my research. I think John West could tell you more about that. He did a beautiful job, and made me a nice compound. 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. So I got a board, drilled holes to put the tube in, ran wires down it to put in the holes [and got the oscillator to work]. My experience with this is that universities typically don't want to get too involved in licensing and business relationships. At the undergraduate level, I always thought students got the idea a lot better, particularly with physics students, if you could demonstrate how physics is used in hands-on stuff. Crises aren't always that bad in the sense that they can move things along and force people to look at other ways. The Japanese could do this. The University got a little bit of royalty stream from it, a tiny amount. I had a friend, and we got interested in ham radio, so I built my own transmitter, learned Morse code. [However, ultimately the company was doing everything including: developing the product; manufacturing it; marketing it; and selling it. 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. But anyway, Jim ran into materials issues. Al didn't want to get involved in the lawsuit probably because his former student working with him had worked for Hoffmann-La Roche. That's where the early display work was really making progress. On the bad side, it shut down a lot of the interpersonal activity it takes to get things done. Xerox was studying its electro-optical properties. ]You had to really make a little circuit at each pixel site to really make these things switch well. I thought maybe a master's degree would be good. [Laugh] And he did. CRAWFORD: Just thinking about this historical moment, and you mentioned the shootings, which of course happened May 4, 1970, part of this whole moment with the protest against the Vietnam War. It's a very low-powered device.DOANE: The Boogie Board takes no power to write on it. I wasn't so inclined to do that because I didn't want to get in the middle of something between Glenn Brown and Fergason. I think she guided me a lot in this direction. I think it's going to play a strong role in history, and what you're documenting will be very helpful to others. I got an investor who could handle a lot of it. CRAWFORD: Do you have a sense of why that was?DOANE: I don't know. He's got a lot of patents and publications of his own. After I retired from Kent State, I would've done it if I'd had to, but I thought we could do better with somebody from outside. Under Doane, the LCI received significant funding from state, federal, and corporate sources including Project THEMIS, DARPA, and the National Science Foundation. DARPA primarily, but also the Navy and other agencies, the Army, started funding display research. Generally universities want to publish their research results. And they decided to go with a twist cell. It was a form of technology transfer. In talking to my friend at MIT, he was saying their experienceand he had a lot more experience than I did, was that MIT had trouble making money on licensing. DOANE: Yeah, and not only funding us but several industries as well. His name is on a couple patents. They awarded 12, but we weren't awarded one in the first group. Further, patents have a limited lifetime.] My father was very interested in astronomy, and he would point out things to me about the Milky Way, the various stars, and so on. Available Information : Postal address, Phone number, Fax number, Website, Email address, Mayor, Geographical coordinates, Population, Altitude, Area, Weather and Hotel. Another problem at that time, which isn't an issue anymore, was having the right kind of liquid crystal material to use it with. Saupe, being in the Institute off campus, away from the physics department, was never around in physics. But it did force them to really think about, "Is what I'm doing really relevant?" CRAWFORD: It sounded more like kind of an aspiration. ]CRAWFORD: Having worked in this field, what does technology transfer mean? In other words, it was sort of outside of the realm of the University, not as closely controlled.DOANE: But it was really part of the University because Fergason's salary came through the University, so did Alfred Saupes. One way to do that was not to take an exclusive license for the entire patent, but to narrow it down [and license it for some specific application]. But I guess I'm wondering if some of this work on applicationslike you said, Fergason just wanted to make a watch face. [This was puzzling to us but after some thought and a magnetic resonance study of the material, we realized that it must have turned white because, after the polymer cured overnight, it encapsulated the liquid crystal in tiny droplets.] I took my display there, and they let me give a talk on it. What did you want to see develop here?DOANE: The university was doing an awful lot of licensing of switchable window technology to Japan. But I would say that was kind of how I got started in it. Asad worked very closely with me on all of these things, and eventually he took over as principal investigator on all government contacts ultimately becoming CTO as I got closer to retirement. Glenn learned that he wanted to immigrate, and Glenn wanted to see if he could get him. I said, "This is great, we've made it to the site visit." I wanted to establish a nice relationship with industry, learn what they were doing and how we could interact with them. He just couldn't do it anymore. Instead of just funding Utah, they sent out requests for proposals. After they were discovered in 1888 or so, in the 1930s, there was some very good work done in Germany by several people. I had no issues with Glenn other than the fact that we disagreed on where the Institute should be located. [Laugh] I happened to wander by this one room, and I looked in there, and it was just full of electronics. Jim Fergason and Glenn Brown together could have helped in that issue. We wouldn't have cell phones with displays, flat TV screens, interactive wrist watches etc. Is there a particular reason why they focused on that type of cell at that time?DOANE: I don't know their reasoning, but I can tell you why I'd choose it. Do you want to talk with a At that time, both of our work was focused on solid crystalline materials. It's a very complex issue. DOANE: It was very good for the LCI [and also for Kent State in other ways]. In order to apply for one of these things, you were encouraged to show how you could create technology and get it into the US economy. While I had two sisters, [eight and ten years older], I was pretty much like an only child in the sense that we lived so far out in the country that, to go to high school, my sisters had to live with a family in town. Were there other types of interactions, people moving back and forth?DOANE: Oh, yes. I went there, and I wasn't in engineering very long. Atlanta-based Preferred Apartment Communities (NYSE: APTS). It turns out that Jim Feragson was also developing the twist cell display technology at Kent and was likely aware of the LCD interest at Hoffmann-La Roche. DOANE: I never viewed myself as a pioneer. But we really made a nice presentation. Further, in the ALCOM Center, we had a very successful K-12 program, too.CRAWFORD: When you were training students, how important was it to guide them on a trajectory into industry or academia?DOANE: [My approach was just to teach them basic science and how to do research that they use either in industry or academia.] Geographic Information regarding City of Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin. But I didn't really do too much because it's primarily coursework. It was all basic research. CRAWFORD: Who was that?DOANE: His name was Albert Green. As a result the company became focused on writing.CRAWFORD: Before the shift to the Boogie Board, you mentioned that the company was making signs and had some contracts in Israel and whatnot. But we could see what the challenges were in doing that sort of thing, and it was kind of fun to do that. I didn't view it as that at all. She'd recall these numbers easily as she was a superb manager.CRAWFORD: What did this mean in terms of the research agenda, either for your group or the Institute as a whole? He was with me during the development of the company, and now he runs it as CEO. 2 car garage and Large front yard. It's good of Wil Franklin that he did this. I visited many potential investors, the contacts that I set up were on my own.] A slight pressure of the pointed object creates an image. We could put more people together. I think Ohio generally is a good place for industry development. Last month, the real estate company QIC was going to buy Forest City's stake in the Town Center Mall. Kent State made money on licensing, [but they didnt make a lot in view of work and the trouble it can cause, particularly if the patent is challenged and there is a court battle. More Public accommodations protections include being unfairly refused services or entry to or from places accessible to the public (retail stores, restaurants, parks, hotels, etc). They wanted something you could wear, could see very clearly, and not have to change the battery. Call today 770-334-8916 ask for Tanya. You mentioned using LCI facilities, but were there other interactions?DOANE: [We still use institute facilities at Kent State today as well as facilities of other universities in the area.] When I came to Kent in 1965, physics had just started its graduate program. I walked into his office, and he invited me in, I sat down, and the first question he asked was, "Are you a Methodist?" Saupe would've been the type of witness that worked against you.CRAWFORD: Right, hostile.DOANE: Right, a hostile witness. Each room has its own private bath. That was my focus at that time. 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. 2 hours from Lincoln, NE. I just looked at it from the point of view of fundamentally understanding the liquid crystal material states of matter. I didn't know it at the time, but I think the biggest discovery for me was the polymer dispersion. ]CRAWFORD: When you took over as director, obviously you were moving in this applied direction, but did you also want to develop the LCI's relationship with companies?DOANE: Oh, yes, I did. The Institute would've been a larger and more effective organization much earlier. My understanding of the institute at that time was that, he brought in Sardari Arora as a chemist, and a physical chemist Adriaan De Vries, who did X-ray work, [and a postdoc, Bill Bacon]. The company has been improving on this over the years. Then, in RCA, there was a group. There's another issue about Fergason I'd like you to be aware of. Then, when it came time to graduate, I had to start looking at places to go and things to do. Over in chemistry, there was Vernon Neff, who was doing infrared dichroic studies, [Bill Bacon on liquid crystal phases. Roland was interested in using nuclear magnetic resonance to study molecular diffusion. But, luckily I had these polymer dispersions that I discovered with my friend Pino and they had shown promise for switchable windows. I learned a lot from that, and one of the things I learned being on this panel was that there was a serious issue with the technology they were developing in Japan, the forerunner of that on your cell phone. We drove out, and we hadn't been there one day when I got a call from Glenn. DOANE: Yeah, it was, but my focus changed to the company because I really wanted this company to survive and do well. "]DOANE: That may have been how it was then. Some agreed to put large sums of money directly into the Institute for further development of polymer dispersions. What were your hopes and goals for the company when you founded it?DOANE: There were several reasons I wanted to start the company, one of them being that at that time, I was directing the ALCOM Center at Kent State, and we were developing new technology. Then, Hughes Research in Malibu California got involved because at that time, Hughes was owned by General Motors. It turns out that writing tablets actually use both PDLCs and cholesteric liquid crystals in which polymers are dispersed in the cholesteric liquid crystal. Akron has a very strong polymer program, which is helpful to us, too. I told President Mike Schwartz, and his [Vice President for Academic Affairs] at the time, [Terry] Roark. He needed a graduate student, so we decided I'd stay and work with him.CRAWFORD: What was his name?DOANE: His name was Roland Hultsch. I think he may have written it when he was at the University of Cincinnati. Welcome Home! However, now I had a system that looked like I could do applied research. DOANE: Building the research graduate programs, yes. Register or Buy Tickets, Price information. It was sort of a political thing. If you lower the voltage of the pulse to another certain level, it will turn to the other texture for the background. Doane later helped create spin-off companies, such as Kent Displays, Inc. which was established in 1993. Japan really took the bull by the horns and [, in the end, were the ones to successfully commercialize it.] It's just recognition that somebody saw what you were doing. The very first conference Glenn formed, I pulled out the booklet for that to see who had attended, and there were a few people from industry. I worked with him and helped with stuff, we went down in limestone mines, looking at cosmic rays. Request Tour Send an Email Highlights Here are some of the most popular amenities Pet Friendly Washer & Dryer In Unit Floor Plans I thought it was sort of like a double resonance. But our initial work with General Motors really set the stage for becoming a display-oriented group because we then had a clean room and other facilities needed for this. Particularly, with General Motors and 3M. At USC, they were doing work on organic light-emitting diodes, and we were doing work on liquid crystal displays. I don't think the company lost any personnel. Been here 5+ times. [Laugh] That was the start of a major change in my research life. Time zone of Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin. It's caused governments and people in general to think about doing a better job in how we deal with these pathogens, viruses, and stuff. But we were told why we were not awarded, because we were doing work with polymers, yet we had no polymer program. There were in addition several senior research fellows that include Adriaan De Vries doing x ray studies, and Mary Neubert who performed chemical synthesis of liquid crystal materials for all the researchers to work on.] Dr. Doane, thank you for agreeing to speak with me today.J. But it was a surprise to me to see the discontinuity between the two.CRAWFORD: You mentioned when you went to this meeting of the Society for Information Displays, you were the only person from a university.DOANE: Yeah, I didn't see anybody else there from a university.CRAWFORD: Was the inverse true, that there were few industry people at the International Liquid Crystal conferences?DOANE: I looked into that, actually. Nowadays, we have software that keeps track of publications, and you can get a score based on the quantity you have. Here, you had to put these transistors on large surfaces for TV and other display screens. Because one radio frequency would interfere with the other. Event starts on Sunday, 30 April 2023 and happening at Brandon Town Center Mall, Brandon, FL. You have to know how to do that and how to learn from others. In my view, if Kent was going to really build graduate programs, it needed to focus somehow. Today's date is August 10th, 2021. Below is a list of activities and point of interest in Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin and its surroundings. It just seemed to me that if I'm building a program, the more support I have from that program, the more people are involved. Their backlighting technology was becoming cheaper and cheaper as was battery technology, and it was becoming harder to compete. Joel Domino, was the company's first employee. Peachtree Rides (Mall Train) I lived out in the country and didn't have many people to play with. I went around looking for investors, since I had no money on my own to do it. We haven't talked a lot about your approach to education and training students. CRAWFORD: Was there any particular reason why?DOANE: You had to have an electrical engineering department. They're up in a little town, Kent, Ohio." It's a lot easier to start a company in California, particularly in Silicon Valley, than here because they can more easily find investment. Then, there's also the question of whether the research was done on campus, licensing, and so forth. He said, "Well, I wonder if you'd like to work with me and help me. As with other faculty in physics and chemistry,] it helped me build up a very nice laboratory with a lot of students involved. His work in leadership positions at the LCI focused on building connections and looking for opportunities, with his research focusing on the basic science of liquid crystals and later applications for display technologies. But there was nobody else who wanted to take over the Institute, basically. 1. 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. Just from your experience having worked at Kent Displays, Northeast Ohio of course is different in some ways than Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Northern California in lots of ways. Building up a local economy and, ultimately, after a time, providing things like endowments. We decided at one time to try Amazon, and we sent them a number of them. And if you publish it, you can't further develop it in order to patent it. Location! Even today, we make use of universities, which is very helpful in this regard. There were all sorts of projects going on. CRAWFORD: What did it look like when he was switching?DOANE: It would switch between a specific reflective color to no color at all; that is, become totally transparent. It was a lot of work. So, that sort of thing? When you put it between two sheets of plastic, it can assume two different types of contrasting visual textures. I thought it was nice to have Fergason doing these things. What often cannot be not useful is valuing one specific area of research over another. There were a variety of different types of liquid crystal displays being developed at that time with many industrial efforts to develop a full color flat-panel screen.