Larry Hornbeck

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Larry J. Hornbeck (born September 17, 1943) is an American physicist and inventor of the digital micromirror device (DMD). He took part in the realization of the DLP CINEMA technology while working at Texas Instruments (TI). [1]

Contents

Life and career

Larry Hornbeck received a Ph.D. in physics from Case Western Reserve University in 1974. He joined TI in 1973 and he began work on optical microelectromechanical systems in 1977. [2]

Larry Hornbeck had manufactured and demonstrated the first DMD in 1987. [3]

In 2007, Hornbeck was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for the invention and development of the Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) and its application to projection display technology.

Awards and honors

Bibliography

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Spatial light modulator

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Laser color television, or laser color video display utilizes two or more individually modulated optical (laser) rays of different colors to produce a combined spot that is scanned and projected across the image plane by a polygon-mirror system or less effectively by optoelectronic means to produce a color-television display. The systems work either by scanning the entire picture a dot at a time and modulating the laser directly at high frequency, much like the electron beams in a cathode ray tube, or by optically spreading and then modulating the laser and scanning a line at a time, the line itself being modulated in much the same way as with digital light processing (DLP).

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Digital micromirror device

The digital micromirror device, or DMD, is the microoptoelectromechanical system (MOEMS) that is the core of the trademarked DLP projection technology from Texas Instruments (TI). Texas Instrument's DMD was created by solid state physicist and TI Fellow Emeritus Dr. Larry Hornbeck in 1987. However, the technology goes back to 1973 with Harvey C. Nathanson's use of millions of microscopically small moving mirrors to create a video display of the type now found in digital projectors.

Micromirror devices are devices based on microscopically small mirrors. The mirrors are microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), which means that their states are controlled by applying a voltage between the two electrodes around the mirror arrays. Digital micromirror devices are used in video projectors and optics and micromirror devices for light deflection and control.

Electrically operated display devices have developed from electromechanical systems for display of text, up to all-electronic devices capable of full-motion 3D color graphic displays. Electromagnetic devices, using a solenoid coil to control a visible flag or flap, were the earliest type, and were used for text displays such as stock market prices and arrival/departure display times. The cathode ray tube was the workhorse of text and video display technology for several decades until being displaced by plasma, liquid crystal (LCD), and solid-state devices such as thin-film transistors (TFTs), LEDs and OLEDs. With the advent of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), integrated circuit (IC) chips, microprocessors, and microelectronic devices, many more individual picture elements ("pixels") could be incorporated into one display device, allowing graphic displays and video.

Telescopic pixel display (TPD) is a new display technology which combines some of the properties of a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD).

References

  1. Texas Instruments : DLP History.
  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology : Larry Hornbeck.
  3. American Institute of Physics : Larry Hornbeck.