The establishment of the E Ink Corporation in 1997 led to the development of electronic paper, a technology which allows a display screen to reflect light like
ordinary paper without the need for a backlight; electronic paper was incorporated first into the Sony Librie (released in 2004) and Sony Reader (2006), followed by the Amazon Kindle, a device which, upon its release in 2007, sold out within five hours.
Unlike a conventional flat panel display, which uses a backlight to illuminate its pixels, electronic
paper reflects light like
ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely
without drawing electricity, while allowing the image to be changed later.