eBook readers – the technology behind them:e-Ink

Carrying books - before e-ink readers appeared

We’re living in active times. Most of us spend a lot of time on the road, either commuting or traveling for pleasure/work . Thus, we have less and less time for activities like reading. But reading is so important to everyone’s education as it can’t be overlooked.

For a while, carrying books around was the only solution. Big heavy books. But things changed when the devices called ebook readers entered the market, a couple of years ago.

These electronic devices allow you to store and use multiple kinds of electronic documents, including texts, graphics, pictures and even audio files . All these in a compact gadget very easy to carry around .

You might say similar things can be achieved with a modern mobile phone or a netbook . But that’s not entirely true , cause ebook readers use a special kind of display technology, one that tries to imitate the sensation you get when reading a normal book as close as possible. This technology is called e-ink display .

Unlike regular LCD screens, the ones that use e-ink consist are different. They have a layer with millions of electronic charged micro-capsules between two layers of glass (or something similar). Whenever you want to change the image shown on the screen, an electronic impulse arranges the micro-capsules in the required way and the content is displayed. This way, the e-ink screens don’t have a negative effect on your eyes, as they are not continuously back lit. They resemble almost perfectly a piece of paper and you will need and external light source to read them. Also, they don’t require much energy to work, as electricity is only used when you change the displayed content. and one more thing: e-ink screens are a lot less fragile and resistant than other types of screens.

How eink screens display content

There are some downfalls e-ink displays have though. Since this is a relatively new technology, they can only display black/white static pictures for now. Experimental colored e-ink displays have been tested, and they are expected to reach the market in a couple of years, but they will be pretty expensive. As for running movies on e-ink displays, this might not happen very soon. But after-all, these screens are not made for dynamic content anyway.

So, e-ink screens allowed the construction of the ebook readers because they we capable of imitating closely the sensation you had when reading a normal paper book.

These days there are quite a few models on the market of such devices, including Amazon Kindle and the new DX or Sony’s Reader . More about those and other interesting subjects about ebook readers in a next post though .