I never really worried about COVID as a disease, I just followed along with what professionals thought we should do. [As I mentioned earlier, group funding had ended and liquid crystal research on campus was beginning to fall apart.] Close to schools (KSU), shopping, mall (Town Center at Cobb), & interstates. I think this is the only example I know of where this has happened, where two different countries have a different patent ownership. The viewing angle was a big issue on displays. That was the discovery of polymer liquid crystal dispersions! It can be formulated so that the slightest change in temperature changes the color. It really didn't have a lot to do with my nuclear spin pumping and my double resonance experiments [other than we were both working with solid crystals]. This choice to take some research and move it into patents, take it out of publication, was that a concern at all, that you'd be taking away from your academic achievement?DOANE: It wasn't a concern for me because I really wanted to get into applied research. That's what I did for my personal research however it was a small part of the overall program. My father, early on, had bought me a crystal radio set. Chemistry was really opposed to it because they saw these courses encroaching on their courses. [Start Part 1]MATTHEW CRAWFORD: My name is Matthew Crawford. DOANE: The early 70s, of course, is when the THEMIS grant was going. At the time of the discovery I just thought it was just a different way to make confined droplets of liquid crystals. Japan really took the bull by the horns and [, in the end, were the ones to successfully commercialize it.] I wonder if you could tell us when and where you were born and what your early childhood was like.DOANE: Sure. 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. Also, there were a lot of students involved. I guess towards the late 80s, these programs became available. Located at Interstate 225 at Alameda Avenue, the Town Center at . 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. [Laugh] But much to my surprise, there was interest in it because it was a reflective and lower power technology, an advantage over what the Japanese firms were showing . Forming the company while I still directed the Institute caused some issues. It's called the active matrix. He started a conversation with me. They knew how to do that very well. Please include proper citation and credit for use of this item. CRAWFORD: Would you say that's true for yourself, that you've learned better when you can see the uses?DOANE: Oh, yeah. But we were told why we were not awarded, because we were doing work with polymers, yet we had no polymer program. At that particular point, I married my wife, Shirley, right after I graduated.CRAWFORD: This would've been 1950?DOANE: 1958. I never wanted to run the company because I didn't think I had the right expertise. CRAWFORD: In a Daily Kent Stater article in 1973, Wilbur Franklin, professor of physics, who actually wrote an op-ed responding to the student protests. We had all the patents on this, so I flew down to Texas to talk to this company and tell them, "Look, we have the patents on this, and we're going to protect them. But we could see what the challenges were in doing that sort of thing, and it was kind of fun to do that. 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. There were some research agreements with them but, no doubt the details were confidential at the time. CRAWFORD: It sounded more like kind of an aspiration. By that time, Sardari Arora had left. 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. CRAWFORD: I was going to ask if that new building made it harder to encourage interactions.DOANE: [No, in fact the opposite since by the time of ALCOM there are now other departments involved such as Mathematics, Biology, and, now more recently Engineering. Another thing I discovered at this meeting was that I was the only person there from a university. Request Tour Send an Email Highlights Here are some of the most popular amenities Pet Friendly Patio Floor Plans 1 unit available 1 Bedroom 1 bed 1 bath $625/mo I come from the academic world. That was something he really wanted to focus on. Bahman Taheri founded one of them, Alpha Micron, Inc.. That was one reason. He did that, and the experiment was a failure because the liquid crystal mixed with the epoxy. They'd come here, we'd go there, we'd meet in various places, help one another with various projects. Public accommodations protections include being unfairly refused services or entry to or from places accessible to the public (retail stores, restaurants, parks, hotels, etc). 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. Prices and availability are subject to change without notice. [Laugh] You better learn how to write grants. Fundamentally, it's very simple. I can only speak from a Kent point of view because that's where I was at the time. It actually was at that point that I began to think about seeing if I could get a building on the research campus [to make a closer tie between liquid crystal research on campus and that of the institute].CRAWFORD: Were you hoping to provoke more interaction between Institute researchers and the physics and chemistry departments?DOANE: Yes. I couldn't come into my lab, and there was a short time we couldn't do things.CRAWFORD: But it didn't lead to a sense of, "Maybe we should downplay our support from the military"?DOANE: No. [End Part 1][Start Part 2]MATTHEW CRAWFORD: My name is Matthew Crawford. There are alignment layers, retardation films, liquid crystal materials where significant contributions are made. "I want to make clear that the Institute was not founded to do feasibility studies for industries. [Laugh]CRAWFORD: Why do you say that?DOANE: If the Institute had had a display program going, it would've been a bonanza. Do additional legal protections exist for the LGBTQ community at the county level in Cobb County? I wanted Kent to benefit from this. It's just kind of in my nature. DOANE: But THEMIS, as I understood it, they just wanted basic fundamental research on liquid crystals. This turned out to be a big problem, actually.CRAWFORD: Id be happy to hear. I had several visits with him, and he invited me up to Rochester to show him some displays. Business acumen?DOANE: He was a Stanford graduate in physics. However, there were a couple people on the board of trustees at Kent State University at that time who were very helpful. He wanted to be where there were some trees. In the summer of '67, my wife and I took our summer vacation, and we went back home to visit our parents. I have lost track of where they're sold now but I think mostly overseas. 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. They had this program, but they needed a proposal in just a few weeks. They may have been beginning to think, "How are we going to do a big flat panel consisting of a matrix of many pixels?" It was an opportunity for the US, and it did not happen. Evidently, he could not get Glenn Brown to participate either.CRAWFORD: It sounds like, on the one hand, Fergason files these patents claiming he did the work separate from the university, but now Timex is coming back with this lawsuit against Kent State. They were not interested in any applied aspects. CRAWFORD: I want to circle back to the late 80s. They gave it to me to put in the Institute so we could make displays in the Institute. Glenn Brown was a very good friend of mine, and I have a high regard for him. But primarily USC and Kent State carried the ball in this program.. We met a lot and really worked closely together. It is in a very convenient location, about 2 miles to KSU, 2 miles to I-75, less than 1 mile to downtown kennesaw and 4 miles to town center mall. And in the meantime, I'd talked with others who may have wanted to invest in it, some people up in Cleveland who thought they might do it. You put something black behind it, it looks black, but in the other state, it's a beautiful reflective green. The benefit is that they can say, "Look what we're doing for the local economy." And that's the proposal we gave them and that is what they funded. DOANE: I think that may be one of my best contributions, actually.CRAWFORD: Could that be seen as pioneering? When I came to Kent in 1965, physics had just started its graduate program. It was called that because chemistry got their PhD program first. With See more 27,359 people like this I didn't think we had a chance in hell of getting this thing because it was thrown together so fast. As soon as I met Sardari, I talked him into synthesizing a liquid crystal I could use with magnetic resonance. It was called JTech. At USC, they were doing work on organic light-emitting diodes, and we were doing work on liquid crystal displays. Welcome Home! The Japanese had really gotten it off the ground. I think that was primarily the attractiveness of it. And there was a market for writing tablets in China. That happened in the late 70s, early 80s.CRAWFORD: Do you recall the name of that researcher from the University of Calabria?DOANE: Yes, his name was Giuseppe Chidichimo, but he called himself Pino. It takes a lot of money to start a company, particularly in a new technology. listen here. And then you can only see a nice image indoors. He got somebody, a private individual, to support building it off campus quite apart from the research campus where the science departments, physics, chemistry and biology were located . It really helps to have a relevancy to your research work rather than just being something of interest.] I saw it from the point of view of just having something that we can hang our hat on that we were in the display business. Being at a small grade school, I really was not exposed to that much science. CRAWFORD: Was it hard to leave the Institute after running it for 13 years? 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. I thought it was good for Kent State, too. One state would reflect a color, and the other state was transparent. The goal is to just have a conversation, and certainly, you've filled in the picture a lot about the Institute, and the development of liquid crystals, and the changes in the way science is done. Then, liquid crystals came up again. ]CRAWFORD: Do you think it would've been better for the field of liquid crystal science if there had been more interaction between industry and academia?DOANE: It would've been better for Kent, I can tell you that. Newly updated with Stainless Steel Appliances, Flooring with Luxury Vinyl Planks and Tile, Stainless Steel Sink, New Lighting, Tile shower in the master. Theoretically, you could make what was called a raser. It was a lot of work. I had an NIH grant on biological membranes (that are also liquid crystalline) as well. I don't know what I would've done without him. There were also new types of liquid crystal display technologies created that were commercialized. I was then able to convince the University to take an exclusive license for the technology for all applications. CRAWFORD: But it also sounds like it was in line with your interests.DOANE: Oh, yes, it was very much in line with my interests. 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