Peter J. Wild (; born 1939) is a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

electronics engineer Electronic engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering that emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current flow ...

and a pioneer of

liquid-crystal display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other Electro-optic modulator, electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liq ...

(LCD) technology. Peter J

Biography

Peter Josef Wild was born and educated in St. Gallen,

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

. He studied

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

) and graduated in 1963.Peter Josef Wild: "Bewegliche Ordnung. Die BBC als Pionierin bei den Flüssigkristall-Matrixanzeigen". In: ''Franz Betschon et al. (editors): Ingenieure bauen die Schweiz – Technikgeschichte aus erster Hand.''

Neue Zürcher Zeitung The (''NZZ''; "New Newspaper of Zurich") is German language daily newspaper, published by NZZ Mediengruppe in Zurich. The paper was founded in 1780. It has a reputation as a high-quality newspaper, as the German Swiss newspaper of record ...

, NZZ Libro, Zurich 2013, Biography Peter Wild, p. 522. From 1965 to 1968 he worked in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

, California, as development engineer and obtained a

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

. After his return to Switzerland in 1969, he joined the new Corporate Research Center of

Brown, Boveri & Cie Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Baden bei Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oer ...

(now

ABB ABB Group is a Swedish-Swiss multinational electrical engineering corporation. Incorporated in Switzerland as ABB Ltd., and headquartered in Zurich, it is dual-listed on the Nasdaq Nordic exchange in Stockholm, Sweden, and the SIX Swiss Excha ...

) in

Baden, Switzerland Baden (German language, German for "Thermal bath, baths"), sometimes unofficially, to distinguish it from Baden (disambiguation), other Badens, called Baden bei Zürich ("Baden near Zürich") or Baden im Aargau ("Baden in the Aargau"), is a town ...

, developed a phase measurement for an opto-electric current meter on high-voltage lines based on the

Faraday effect The Faraday effect or Faraday rotation, sometimes referred to as the magneto-optic Faraday effect (MOFE), is a physical magneto-optical phenomenon. The Faraday effect causes a polarization rotation which is proportional to the projection of the ...

working with Andre Jaecklin and became the first member of a team developing LCDs from 1970 onwards.Peter J. Wild
"Liquid Crystal Display Evolution – Swiss Contributions."
''

Engineering and Technology History Wiki The Engineering and Technology History Wiki (ETHW) is a MediaWiki-based website dedicated to the history of technology. It started operating in 2015. It consists of articles, first-hand accounts, oral histories, landmarks and milestones. A partners ...

''. Retrieved 30 July 2022. In 1980, he started working in the Swiss telecommunications industry for the rest of his career.

Achievements

Initially, Wild investigated earlier LCD work done at the

RCA Laboratories RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company ...

in the US. Thereafter, Brown Boveri entered into a joint venture with

Roche F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, commonly known as Roche (), is a Switzerland, Swiss multinational corporation, multinational holding healthcare company that operates worldwide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics. Its holding company, ...

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

to explore LCD technologies. As part of this common project,

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

s at Roche discovered and patented the ''

Twisted nematic field effect The twisted nematic effect (''TN effect'') was a major technological breakthrough that made the manufacture of large, thin liquid crystal displays practical and cost competitive. Unlike earlier flat-panel displays, TN cells did not require a curre ...

(TN)''. Also, new room-temperature liquid crystal compounds for the TN effect were developed during this cooperation. Wild recognized early-on, that matrix-addressing of such displays was important for many potential applications to show images (such as flat-screen

computer monitor A computer monitor is an output device that displays information in pictorial or textual form. A discrete monitor comprises a electronic visual display, visual display, support electronics, power supply, Housing (engineering), housing, electri ...

s). Results of his work in this field were published. In particular, Wild discovered, that the RMS voltage of the driving waveforms of LCD matrix displays is relevant for the electrooptic threshold and is not to be exceeded at partially-addressed

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

s of passive-matrix displays.P. J. Wild: ''Matrix-addressed Liquid Crystal Projection Display,'' Digest of Technical Papers, International Symposium, Society for Information Display, pp. 62–63, June 1972 Pioneering work of his team included experiments with

LCD projector An LCD projector is a type of video projector for displaying video, images or computer data on a screen or other flat surface. It is a modern equivalent of the slide projector or overhead projector. To display images, LCD (liquid crystal display, ...

s as well as illumination schemes for

backlit A backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) that provides light from the back or side of a display panel. LCDs do not produce light on their own, so they require illumination—either from ambient light or a de ...

panels resulting in corresponding patents. More than 20 patent applications where filed naming Wild as inventor or co-inventor.''Inventor Peter Wild, assignee Brown, Boveri & Cie.''
patents.google.com. Retrieved 14 July 2022. He helped setting up manufacturing of TN LCDs at a new factory in

Lenzburg Lenzburg is a town in the central region of the Switzerland, Swiss canton of Aargau and is the capital of the Lenzburg District. The town, founded in the Middle Ages, lies in the Seetal, Seetal valley, about 3 kilometres south of the Aare river. L ...

, Switzerland, which started deliveries in 1974, mainly to manufacturers of

digital watch A watch is a timepiece carried or worn by a person. It is designed to maintain a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is worn around the wrist, attached by a watch strap or another type of ...

es,Andreas Moglestue
"The wristwatch connection." ''100 Years of ABB Review: Looking back on a century in print''.
ABB Review 2, 2014, p. 12. Retrieved 8 July 2022. such as

Casio is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturing corporation headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Its products include calculators, mobile phones, digital cameras, electronic musical instruments, and analogue and digital watches. It ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, which used these LCDs to launch its first quartz

wristwatch A watch is a timepiece carried or worn by a person. It is designed to maintain a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is worn around the wrist, attached by a watch strap or another type of ...

es with digital time display under the ''Casiotron'' brand.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wild, Peter J. 1939 births 20th-century Swiss engineers 20th-century Swiss inventors ETH Zurich alumni Living people