The Bridge - Issue 2, 2021 - 42

In Memoriam
Innovator in Electronic Displays
Sourced from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
Lawrence E.
Tannas Jr., 84
IEEE Life Member
UCLA
IEEE Life Member Lawrence E. Tannas Jr., a visionary engineer who pushed
the evolution of the electronic displays industry from its early days in
avionics to a global presence, died 5 February 2021. He was 84.
Known as " Larry " to all, Tannas earned a bachelor's and a master's degree
in engineering at UCLA in 1959 and 1961, respectively.
After graduation, Tannas worked in Southern California's burgeoning
aerospace industry. He developed automated landing systems at General
Electric Co., designed the backup reentry-guidance display for the Apollo
reentry vehicle at Honeywell International Inc., and at Martin Marietta Inc.,
he created a cockpit for the SV-5 manned space vehicle-an Air Force
prototype that was an important predecessor to NASA's space shuttle.
As Tannas progressed in his career, he began to specialize in technologies
for flat-panel displays, in particular, liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Tannas
was instrumental in the early growth of this technology and its evolution.
It was his work at Rockwell Autonetics in the 1970s that established the
world's first production line for LCDs. He then perfected a manufacturing
process for electroluminescent displays while at Aerojet
Electro-Systems Corp.
In 1999, he founded Tannas Electronic Displays, Inc., which specialized in
research, development, manufacturing and licensing of intellectual property
for resizing LCDs. In 2015, he sold the company to Pixel Scientific Inc., but
remained active in the industry as president of the consulting firm Tannas
Electronics. Throughout his career, he was awarded 28 patents and had
more than 10 others pending.
Parallel to his pioneering career, Tannas was also a proponent of elevating
electronic displays, also known as information displays, to be a vibrant
scientific field in its own. He was a fellow and past-president of the Society
for Information Display (SID).
From 1980 to 2000, Tannas developed and taught advanced engineering
classes on information displays at UCLA Extension, as well as at other
institutions. He was also the author of more than 50 technical papers, and
wrote and edited the first definitive book on flat-panel displays, " Flat-Panel
Displays and CRTs, " published in 1983 by Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Tannas is survived by Carol, his wife of 64 years, three children, and
10 grandchildren.
Photo credit: UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
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