EETimes has a very interesting interview with one of the pioneers of optical solid state engineering. This guy won an Emmy for his invention of the digital micromirror device (DMD), the gadget that drives TI's digital light processing (DLP) technology. He's also worked on holographic storage, among other things. Pretty cool.

"EETimes: What influenced TI to move in the HDTV direction? Hornbeck: In 1989, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency started an initiative to spur the development of HDTV technology in the U.S., and TI was awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to develop a prototype high-definition DMD chip."