By Neil Morris

We tend to leave a radio playing in our kitchen at home and so it was on last evening, January 7, 1999. I tuned to BBC Radio4 around 9 p.m. when a science magazine program was just starting with something like "and now for the All Plastic Radio." As I later found out from the radio listings, this was a new technology series called, "Testbeds," with the first program being called "Plastics for Everything - Including TV Screens."

The point of the program was to investigate just how far current science has gone in producing a totally plastic radio, no wires/metal etc! Hmm interesting I thought, so I stuck with it for the next 20 minutes or so. Glad I did. One of the comments made my ears perk up and my hair stand on end.

The program concentrated on 2 research centres, one in the UK in Cambridge and the other Lucent labs, part of Bell. Both centres are deeply into research of electrically conducting polymers (plastic) and the UK team has produced light emitting polymers in any colour, and this year will be producing a colour display (TV screen) you can roll up, on a plastic sheet.

The polymers' displays are extremely easy to produce. The lab is currently using a converted bubblejet printer to "print" the displays on whatever material they like, this includes the feeder wires which are polymer conducting plastic! NOT A METALLIC WIRE IN SIGHT.