We all know the e-ink persistent displays, as they’re cheap and plentiful enough to have become ubiquitous in applications such as supermarket price labels. But we don’t often see some of the other technologies that almost did the same thing. The BBC Archive has a report from 1986 showing one of them, a prototype display from STC.

E-ink relies on flipping the arrangement of black and white particles in its pixels, while this one has a fluid in which the molecules are aligned to let light through, or dispersed randomly, at which point they block light. Frustratingly, we aren’t told what the liquid is, but we are given what might be the reason that we’ve never seen one. The activation voltage is rather high at 200 volts. It’s still a fascinating glimpse of something we might have had, with some tasty early-PC-era portables along the way.

The BBC archive has served up quite a bit of retro goodness over time, and we’ve certainly featured one or two of them over time. A recent one was this demonstration of email via a flight to Amsterdam, from the same year as today’s display.

我们都熟悉电子墨水持久显示屏，因为它们价格低廉、供应充足，在超市价格标签等应用中已变得无处不在。但我们很少看到其他一些几乎实现相同效果的技术。BBC档案中有一份1986年的报告，展示了其中之一——来自STC的原型显示屏。

电子墨水依赖于翻转像素中黑白颗粒的排列，而这款显示屏使用的是一种液体，其中分子要么对齐让光线通过，要么随机分散阻挡光线。令人沮丧的是，我们没有被告知这种液体是什么，但得知了可能我们从未见过它的原因：激活电压相当高，达到200伏。这仍然是对我们本可能拥有的事物的迷人一瞥，沿途还伴随着一些令人愉悦的早期PC时代便携设备。

BBC档案随着时间的推移提供了不少复古佳作，我们当然也时不时介绍过其中一两个。最近的一个是这次通过飞往阿姆斯特丹的航班演示电子邮件，与今天展示的显示屏同一年份。