Once TVs, video games, and computers entered the home, consumers increasingly demanded portable versions. But CRTs are by their nature bulky and heavy. What was needed was a new lightweight screen technology that didn't use a lot of power. The solution was liquid crystal display (LCD) screens.

Liquid crystals first were discovered in 1888 by Austrian botanist Frederich Reinitzer, and named a year later by German physicist Otto Lehmann. Russian researchers did early research work in the late 1920s and early 1930s. LCD research was reignited in the U.S. by a 1958 paper by Kent State chemistry professor Dr. Glenn Brown.

The idea that liquid crystals could be used in a display was first suggested in a 1963 paper by RCA researchers Richard Williams and George Heilmeier that proposed the use of liquid crystals for use in a display after discovering that an applied voltage could change the color of a dye-doped nematic liquid crystal, a technology called DSM, or dynamic scattering method. In 1968, Heilmeier's RCA group, which included Lucian Barton, Joseph Castellano, Joel Goldmacher, Nunzio Luce and Louis Zanoni, succeeded in producing the first stable experimental liquid crystal display panels using DSM.

But DSM LCDs consumed a great deal of power. In 1967, Kent State University scientist James Fergason discovered the "twisted nematic" LCD. He produced the first practical LCD panels in 1969 and filed for a patent in 1971.

Working independently, Swiss-based F. Hoffmann-La Roche researchers Martin Schadt and Wolfgang Helfrich also invented the twisted nematic (TN) LCD in 1971. Hoffman-LaRoche later purchased Fergason's patents. British researcher George Gray introduced a technology that made manufacturing liquid crystal displays stable.

Some of Heilmeier's researchers left RCA to form Optel, which designed the first LCD watch, using DSM technology, for Bulova in 1970. But the first modern LCD watch using Fergason's improved twisted nematic technology was made by Fergason's own company, International Liquid Crystal Company (ILIXCO), for Gruen, in 1973. That same year, Sharp produced the first portable calculator, using a DSM LCD screen, and followed with the first portable calculator with a TN LCD screen three years later.

The first color display using lightweight thin film transfer (TFT) (rather than TN) and active matrix technology, in which every pixel is controlled by a transistor, was first developed in 1979 by Walter Spear and Peter LeComber at Dundee University in Scotland.

In May 1985, Seiko-Epson unveiled the first commercial LCD color TV set, which had a two-inch screen using an LCD made with polycrystalline silicon. Various LCD types since have been developed for specific applications and make possible power-efficient and functional laptop computers, miniature TVs and portable DVD players. Today's widescreen, high-definition, flat-panel LCD displays top 42 inches and are getting larger and less expensive each year.