WILLIAM DOANE: Well, thank you for inviting me.CRAWFORD: My pleasure. CRAWFORD: What kind of expertise did you have?DOANE: Of course, I was the principal investigator on the government contracts and managed research and development in the company. I dont know what he called his company, but I think he made good business out of that. I was really excited about that because I was the only one in physics who had any interest in liquid crystals at that time. MLS ID: 10127388. [Because NSF funded each principal investigator separately, it had the effect of decentralizing the liquid crystal research effort on campus. To hear Martin Schadts side of it Im just giving you his side of it now they were working on this particular type of display cell at Hoffman-La Roche in Switzerland, and it was showing promise for a type of display. We decided at one time to try Amazon, and we sent them a number of them. But the political turmoil in the 30s in Germany was horrible. Having local universities around really helps industries and vice versa. http://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/10757, Liquid Crystal Oral History: Doane, J. William (Transcript Only), Finding Aid for the Liquid Crystal Oral History Project records, Department of Special Collections and Archives, http://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/duplication-policy, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, This digital object is owned by Kent State University and may be protected by U.S. That's where the early display work was really making progress. MIT was loosely involved, Columbia University, and UCLA. When we discovered how to do that we realized we could make a nice electronically addressed display out of it. Everybody seemed happy with that, so we did it. What kind of work were you planning on doing with NMR?DOANE: We started out on a number of different topics. In the summer of '67, my wife and I took our summer vacation, and we went back home to visit our parents. Do you want to talk with a Doane was born in Western Nebraska, later moving to Southwest Missouri for high school and eventually attending the University of Missouri and graduating with a bachelors degree in physics. He was going to give a paper on liquid crystals as temperature sensors.CRAWFORD: This was the year you finished your PhD?DOANE: Yes, either '64 or '65. I was dismayed that Glenn and Fergason didn't really work together to take advantage of this for Kent State University. I appreciate you doing this. We became so well-known in Japan and Asia, you could go over to Asia and they knew about Kent State but learned about Cleveland only because they had to fly into it to get here. But the professors themselves often are the ones [who often want to keep hold of that technology. It took several years to get through it, and I think the total expenditures on this, which were provided by Bill Manning, were around $8 million. It was wonderful. But he did like the concept of working with liquid crystals in living systems, what their role was. We had a big handicap here at Kent State because there was no electrical engineering department at Kent at that time. Were they asking the LCI to solve problems for them?DOANE: [They primarily wanted just to be current with the technology as it applied to their companys interest. When I got to high school, my father sold all that property in Nebraska and moved to Southern Missouri. Back then, backlights were not very well-developed, and they took a lot of power. I could have a display film that was flexible, the liquid crystal wouldn't flow out of it, it was trapped inside of it. Have a facility there based on what Glenn had started. Did those events shape the Institute in any significant way? 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. There are alignment layers, retardation films, liquid crystal materials where significant contributions are made. I talked to the physics department to see if I could get an appointment for him in physics, but they didnt want to do it. I convinced them to contribute to this. CONDO Specialist? That turned out to be a really good thing to do. There are 2 Retail spaces available for lease at 390 Ernest W Barrett Pkwy, Kennesaw, GA, 30144, totaling 3,419 SF. The University wanted to license it, and I talked the University into letting me form a company around this. I thought Jim did a nice job getting this program off the ground. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about why you decided to establish Kent Displays. I began to explore other avenues of funding around that time. I would say that was how I got into it. I wanted to tie these things together. To do this, he had to have a lot of support from the University. 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]. I found an investor, which I needed because it was going to be expensive to do it, and I wanted to set an example so other people at the University would do it. Phil Bos knows what those students did when they went out there. Its been over 25 years since I retired from the university and a lot has happened since then.] We drove back to Columbia, Missouri for graduate school.CRAWFORD: Why was it you wanted to work with Professor Duller?DOANE: He had one experiment in mind that I thought was really, really neat. Kansas Manhattan Houses $1,400 710 S Manhattan Ave 710 S Manhattan Ave, Manhattan, KS 66502 South Manhattan 2 Beds 1 Bath 1400 Sqft Contact Property Learn more, take a tour, and get one step closer to your new home. But that was a distraction for the company. I'm glad to hear it. That wasn't in my interest at all. What are the advantages and challenges of running a technology company in this place, in Northeast Ohio? It required polarizers. I wanted the physics department and Kent State University to have something they could hang their hats on. Atlanta-based Preferred Apartment Communities (NYSE: APTS). I had a lot of government support that I could bring into the company as well. We started a project studying these materials with electric field pulses. It was important to me that this company, the first spin-off formed, turn into something. MATTHEW CRAWFORD: My name is Matthew Crawford. She came out on a train around 1915, I think. [Laugh]CRAWFORD: Why do you think that is?DOANE: It just happens. Was the intention originally to produce products for the market?DOANE: We wanted to make and sell things, and we did. But when I married Shirley, she knew from the very beginning I wanted to go back to graduate school. Town Center at Cobb is now one of more than 50 shopping malls in the U.S. owned by Kohan, which is based in Great Neck, New York. ]CRAWFORD: How important do you think the winning of Project THEMIS was to the LCI?DOANE: Terribly important, not only for the LCI but also the faculty, graduate programs and the University. I didn't come here because of liquid crystals, but right after I got here, I went into it, hook, line, and sinker. If it becomes public information, you can't patent it anymore. I was surprised at this. I saw an opportunity [to develop high-definition flat panel displays for the defense agencies]. They were further instrumental in involving other industries such as 3M.] 1 hour from Topeka. I think Ohio generally is a good place for industry development. At that time, I wanted to move the liquid crystal building on to the research campus because that was where most of the research was going on. CRAWFORD: Was it hard to leave the Institute after running it for 13 years? CRAWFORD: I know it may be difficult for you to speak to Dr. Brown's thought process, but why was it so important to have it off campus? ARPA wound up splitting it and making this center NCIPT.CRAWFORD: And that was because you'd all put in proposals related to optical [inaudible]?DOANE: Related to [optics], yes. From that review paper, he learned a lot about who was doing what and where, so he organized the first International Liquid Crystal Conference.CRAWFORD: I just wanted to ask you quickly, I know you weren't involved in liquid crystals at this time, but now having had a career in liquid crystals and having met lots of people, part of the sort of historical narrative about liquid crystals, from what I understand at this point, is that they were discovered in the late 19th century, 1888 or thereabouts. The competitive twist cell technology in Asia was getting better and better. At the time, academic research was seen as sort of enabling a freedom to researchers. I saw only a few closed stores on. I never really worried about COVID as a disease, I just followed along with what professionals thought we should do. He was just getting into it.CRAWFORD: At this meeting, was he just mentioning this as [inaudible]DOANE: I don't recall all the details of that meeting but I am sure he must have because that's where it hit me that this seemed to be a neat field. An oral history interview with J. William Doane, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Emeritus Director of the Liquid Crystal Institute (LCI) at Kent State University, and Co-Founder and Senior Advisor at Kent Displays, Inc., in Kent, Ohio. I told President Mike Schwartz, and his [Vice President for Academic Affairs] at the time, [Terry] Roark. If it didn't have that film on it, you could only see it if you were looking directly at it. I'm an Associate Professor and Historian of Science in the Department of History at Kent State University. But they couldn't do this with Jim Fergason's patent. But I didn't really do too much because it's primarily coursework. Also, because it was trapped and confined, it had different kinds of properties. Charming home in a well kept quiet community. She had a master's degree from Boston University, and I think graduated magna cum laude, majoring in languages. And the governor came. The company's success is, in a large part, due to him and it is fitting that he be CEO today.CRAWFORD: Around what time did you step back from full-time work at the company?DOANE: It happened gradually over the years. It's just the challenge of doing that, it's not necessarily thinking, "I'm going to be able to sell watches. Where do you think that comes from for you?DOANE: I don't know. Usually, in magnetic resonance, your radio signals are absorbed by the nuclear spins, but you could get them so they could emit. There were a number of things we could make on it. With her in such a facility, for example, a physicist, chemist or some other scientist could walk down the hall and say, "Mary, I need to have this or that material" and she would synthesize it, an extremely valuable asset for liquid crystal research. I stopped and looked at it. I said, "I think what I would do is, go down to the store and get some epoxy." Also around that timearound '67, a lot of things happened. [Laugh] CRAWFORD: Did you see patenting as a way of kind of signaling that the Institute was moving into applied research?DOANE: No, I didn't see it from that point of view. Hopefully, things will take a turn for the better soon. Being a scientist isn't just science. The University got a little bit of royalty stream from it, a tiny amount. The time, [ Terry ] Roark the political turmoil in the department History... Spaces available for lease at 390 Ernest W Barrett Pkwy, Kennesaw, GA, 30144, 3,419! Of '67, a lot of support from the very beginning I wanted license. 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