September 30, 2002

An Emmy for the Flat Screen

- from the News & Observer

By Dan Kane, staff writer

© Copyright 2002 News & Observer Publishing Company

RALEIGH -- At a news conference 35 years ago, when Donald L. Bitzer rolled out the first-ever flat-panel screen display, the reporters pointed and said, "It's a TV!"

"No, no, no," Bitzer said. "It's a computer display panel."

But Bitzer, now an N.C. State University computer science professor, is tickled to admit that history has proved him wrong. The small panel he and two colleagues created with sheet glass, gold electrodes and neon gas eventually led to the portrait-size flat-screen televisions that are displacing boxy cathode-ray televisions in homes and businesses.

Wednesday night in New York, the TV industry will honor Bitzer, inventor of the flat-panel plasma screen, with a Scientific and Technological Emmy Award.

It is another of many honors for Bitzer, 68, the irrepressible son of an East St. Louis, Ill., car dealer who is something of a Renaissance man in the world of engineering.

During his 42-year career he has also co-developed the first computer network for education, one of the earliest versions of computer modems and lip-synchronization technology used in computer-animated movies.

Now he is trying to figure out how to tinker with the genetic code in such a way that a benefit particular to humans, such as a disease-fighting protein, can be transferred to another species for mass production.

Technological innovations aside, Bitzer was also ahead of the curve in technology transfer. Twenty years before Congress made it easier for universities to capitalize on their research, he was emphasizing the importance of making discoveries that could quickly benefit society.

"With him, it was: You invent something useful, but then you transfer it to industry," said Larry Weber, a former student who is now CEO of Plasmaco, a research and development company for plasma-screen technology based in Highland, N.Y. "The job wasn't done just getting a patent."

In 1960, after Bitzer earned his doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois, some scientists and educators there were frustrated in their effort to use their new ILLIAC, a gigantic electronic brain that filled two rooms, for educational purposes. Bitzer said he could do it.

They put him in charge, and he delivered. Today, the project called PLATO, Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, has evolved into a private company called novaNET, offering a variety of online courses for all ages.

Bitzer and another University of Illinois professor, Gene Slottow, and a doctoral student, Robert Willson, began developing the plasma-screen display to get PLATO out of the laboratory. Conventional televisions took up too much bandwidth for a network, so they needed a new low-cost display that had graphics capability and could retain images.

They found the answer in alternating-current plasma displays, flat panels filled with a gas such as neon. They energize the gas, which puts it in a plasma state. The ultraviolet light produced by the plasma activates phosphors coated on the display panel. The phosphors light up in different colors to reproduce a transmitted image on the screen.

Several industries eventually used their technology to develop control panels for military equipment and other products. Plasma-screen television began to take off with the advent of high-definition television and DVD players. Consumers wanted larger screens that made the most of what the digital video and broadcasts had to offer.

Charlie Jablonski, chairman of the engineering achievement awards committee for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, said the work of Bitzer, Slottow and Willson was responsible for the new wave in TV technology.

"One of the problems in screen size using a cathode ray tube is that once you get above a certain size, you can't build that sucker anymore -- it gets too big and too heavy," Jablonski said. "But the plasma screens are of a much higher quality, and they are thinner and easier to place."

The price has fallen for plasma screens -- a 36-inch screen that sold for $15,000 four years ago can be found for one-third of that today -- and Jablonski predicts that in a few years, plasma sets will dominate the large-screen television market.

Bitzer moved from Illinois to NCSU in 1989, thanks to special funding from the General Assembly for a distinguished resident professor position. The university was a shrewd recruiter, sending him pictures of the handball courts in Carmichael Gym. He plays daily on his lunch hour, on top of his 90-minute morning workouts.

Other professors say Bitzer has been a spark plug, firing the imaginations of students and researchers.

"He's very encouraging guy, a very smart guy. Well, I'd call him brilliant," said David McAllister, a computer science professor working with Bitzer on lip-synchronization technology. "He's been very good for the department because he likes to work in teams. He likes to help students and faculty, and he's always ready to tell you funny stories."

Several years past retirement age, Bitzer still puts in more than a full day at the university. His position doesn't require him to teach, but he volunteered for the driest, most difficult course in the computer science department: a theory class called Discrete Mathematics.

He has made it fun, employing his skills as a card-carrying magician to teach mathematical principles. He makes paper balls pass through solid plastic cups to explain induction.

Why does he do it? The simple answer is, it just isn't work to Bitzer. It doesn't faze him that he could have made a killing putting his inventiveness to use in the private sector.

"It's not money that makes you happy, it's the lack of money that makes you unhappy," Bitzer said. "My goal is to get every project to a stage where I can just disappear and move on to the next one and have more fun."

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