Need a New Outfit? This Jacket Is Made of E Ink

LAS VEGAS—Hey, think the wearing apparel? I know, it was like some other century. The dress was white, or maybe it was blue. But next year, cheers to E Ink, it could definitely be both.

CES 2022 bug art Nosotros came to E Ink's booth at CES trying to ask about color e-readers and instead ended upwards fascinated with fashion. E Ink Prism Jacket Best known for providing the restful, pleasing monochrome displays that grace Kindles, Eastward Ink also makes screens for electronic baggage tags, price tags, business organization signage, and now, fashion.

The fundamental, in this case, is a new E Ink production called E Ink Prism. Information technology's a plastic movie that can shift colors when a current is applied—right at present, it shifts betwixt white and 1 of seven colors. It was designed for "architectural" uses, Due east Ink chief strategy officer Paul Apen said. But Dai Nippon Press turned Prism into a dress, which it showed off at a retail tech show earlier this year in Japan.

For now, E Ink Prism's stiffness means that you tin can't build an entire garment out of it. (It as well isn't washable.) It would exist perfectly possible to put a color-changing E Ink panel down the side of a skirt, though. In E Ink'southward berth, we saw a "matador style" jacket that shifted from white to black and back.

As the Prism textile is already bachelor, fashion designers could call up about working with it at present, Apen said. But he said information technology'll probably take 2 years or and then for the fashion globe to effigy out how to put shifting E Ink into a garment you'd really buy.

Where'southward My Color Kindle?

Whenever I put a Kindle on our One Cool Affair webshow, viewers inquire why there aren't any color East Ink e-readers. Information technology's a valid question. When I looked at the huge color Eastward Ink displays with classic artwork hanging on the berth wall, I saw the reply. For now, it takes five to ten seconds—and a whole agglomeration of flashes—to change a color Eastward Ink page. That'southward fine for industrial signage, or for digital picture frames. So that'south where you're going to meet Colour East Ink first. Just it won't practice when you're reading.

Apen explained that color East Ink uses iv different pigments—reddish, blueish, green, and white—and it needs to electrostatically adapt all of them, which means an unabridged foursquare trip the light fantastic of do-si-dos equally the pigments align themselves around the screen. E Ink is working on a faster solution, he said, simply it sounds like information technology'll be a few years.