Amazon Kindle 2: It's All About the E Ink
Everyone's talking today about the new Amazon Kindle 2 e-book reader. The second-generation device features a sleeker profile, a speedier operation, and a host of new features and updated options. Behind all of that, though, is the real brilliance of the mobile reading device: the high-tech "virtual ink" that makes the whole thing possible.
The Ink Inside the Amazon Kindle
Amazon's Kindle 2 is powered by technology developed by E Ink Corp., an electronic paper display company born out of the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. It's the same company that created the system behind the Sony Reader.
E Ink's "ink" is some complex stuff, too. As its engineers explain it, "electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronics to create this new material." Err...what?
Translated into its simplest terms, electronic ink is all about a bunch of tiny slimy bubbles. The bubbles live in plastic sheets of film within the displays, and inside each one is a mix of black and white particles floating around in fluid. The Kindle sends an electrical charge into the bubbles, and that makes the particles move upward or downward -- thus creating the ink-like appearance of images and words on your screen.
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