Over 100 scientists met at the IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose. California for a symposium on the Physics and Chemistry of Liquid Crystal Devices. The two-day meeting was intellectually stimulating with excellent oral presentations and with person-to-person discussions. The applications of liquid crystals have developed dramatically in the past ten years. In these few years, they have moved from being a laboratory curiosity to products in the market place. The first commercial application (1940's) of liquid crystals was the preparation of a light polarizer. The second commercial...