Over the last 8 1/2 months, our recent progress in 'smart contact lens' technology was covered in the specialized and even mainstream news media. It all started on December 5th, 2012 with a routine scientific press announcement by imec, accompanied by a live demonstration of a simple yet evocative 'contact lens display'. The lens-shaped, spherically curved display, although merely being able to switch on and off a dollar sign, is so appealing that the mainstream news agencies take over the story. On the same day, the Flemish-Belgian public TV ('Eén'), a business oriented TV channel ('Kanaal Z') and 2 mainstream Dutch radio stations ('Radio1' and 'BNR Nieuwsradio') broadcast interviews with our researchers. The next day, the item is printed in many major Belgian newspapers and starts to appear in technology blogs and online news sites worldwide. The coming days and weeks, several TV crews visit our lab to shoot footage of the 'dollar sign lens': AVS (Flemish-Belgian), RTL-TVi (French-Belgian), Inter-TV (Ukrainian), CNC (Chinese). A short movie that we posted on YouTube attracts more than 200'000 hits in a week time and is presently above 300'000. This is a short and incomplete list of relevant links:
- Cmst YouTube channel with some demo movies (including more recent results)
- TechEye "LCD display fitted onto wearable contact lenses"
- EE|Times "LCD display embedded in contact lens"
- Optics.org "Belgian team develops “LCD” contact-lens display"
- The Telegraph, "Text messages direct to your contact lens"
- Libération, "Un écran LCD dans une lentille de contact"
- Heise online, "Kontaktlinse mit LC-Display entwickelt"