Thermoelectric effect display device

Claim 1

A display device for displaying at least one writing line consisting of characters in response to an incident electric signal, comprising: a smectic liquid crystal layer; two crossed systems of electrodes provided on opposite sides of said layer; electric control means reacting to the content of the incident electric signal to provide current for predetermined periods to selected electrodes of one of said systems so as to establish successive heating and cooling phases in liquid crystal strips adjacent said selected electrodes, and for selectively applying across those of the strips of said layer which are in a cooling phase an electric field to produce a selected optical effect; said one of said systems of electrodes being heated comprising N electrodes and said system of electrodes crossed with said one of said systems comprising M electrodes, where N>M to define a rectangular display array, each of said N electrodes connected in series with a respective non-linear resistance element, said N electrodes of said one electrode system being shorter than said M electrodes of the other crossed electrode system; and said control means comprising means for selectively applying a first voltage to said M electrodes of said other crossed electrode system to produce said electric field and means for selectively applying a second voltage substantially smaller than said first voltage across opposite ends of selected ones of said N electrodes to implement multiplexing of said two electrode systems on two levels, including a first multiplexing level in which the N electrodes of said one electrode system are multiplexed to produce a heating current through selected of said N electrodes and a second multiplexing level for selectively applying said electric field across selected of said electrodes of said first and second electrode systems.