Today we are celebrating Ching Wan Tang, who helped invent OLED technology.

Tang holds a PHD in physical chemistry from Cornell University. Following graduation, he worked at Eastman Kodak, where he was honored with a fellowship.

From Invent.org:

Born in Hong Kong, Tang received his higher education in Canada and the United States and joined Eastman Kodak in 1975. After hiring Van Slyke, they applied the organic heterojunction, a bilayer structure of an electron donor and an electron acceptor invented by Tang, to various applications including OLEDs. OLEDs can be used wherever LCDs are used. They are thinner, lighter, provide superior brightness and color, and offer ultra-fast response time for functions such as refreshing and on-off switching. Unlike LCDs that rely on a backlight that passes through color filters to produce light, OLED screens utilize luminescent organic materials to make their own light.

The first OLED product was a display for a car stereo, commercialized by Pioneer in 1997.