Commercial "LCD" glass

Check into a modern hotel in Tokyo for a demo :-)

If you are in Melbourne and want to see it in action ask for a tour of
Telstra's Global Operations Centre in Clayton.  The viewing room has this
facility for the glassed area facing the main operations floor space.
Impressive, and it operates very quickly from clear to fully opaque and vice
versa.  Nothing new.  The switchable windows have been in use at the GOC
since it was put into operation in the 1990s.

Cheers,
Alan
 

Evidently it also works as a projection screen.

Is it available in small quantities? It seems ideal for protecting my
car number plate from the weather :)

LOL

    Naturally someone's already thought of it and is flogging them. Have
a look at http://www.hideaplate.com/h/hideaplate/index.cfm (if you can
see this posting amongst hundreds of garbage ones).

Bob

I think it is interesting that  the first mooted use for the technology of
transparent/opaque glass using liquid crystal was as a glass wall,
transparent during the day, opaque at night. Nothing came of it. I read of
it in Popular Science, or Popular Mechanics, in the late nineteen forties.
Loved those magazines!

Have a look at this.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/New-LCD-Welding-Helmet-Mask-for-ARC-MIG-TIG-Plasma_W0QQitemZ130098564458QQcategoryZ46413QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
These have been around for a couple of years, same sort of deal.

rowan194 wrote:


I think I read somewhere that they used this technology for some swish
toilets somewhere where you could see the architects 'clean' creation
when the cubicle was unoccupied and it went opaque when occupied.

Apparently it used a motion sensor to detect the occupied state but
had a minor short-coming in the design when people fell asleep
inside...

    The motion sensor sounds like a good idea. ;-)

I thought that was the idea, to stop people staying inside too long? It
sounds a warning buzzer before going clear.

Doesn't the Blue Mt's skyway car also use an LCD glass floor? Apparently so
you can look down when over the gorge, but men underneath can't look up
women's dresses when the car approaches the platform :-)

MrT.

Does anyone know of any commercially available residential solutions?
We're building a new house soon.

There's a restaurant in Milton, Brisbane, that has this glass in its
toilets.  VERY disturbing, so my wife says.

Dave