A HI-TECH project at the cutting edge of technology has won an Oxfordshire company a £121,500 award in a Government competition to encourage new technology.

Ceravision, of Didcot, won the Smart award, run by the Department of Trade and Industry, for its project to develop a new-style flat display screen.

The company is the fifth in the county to win a Smart award this month with awards totalling almost £400,000.

Project engineer Mark Crutch explained that while a standard colour television has three electron guns which need to be steered to produce a picture, the screen being developed by Ceravision has thousands of tiny guns that shoot electrons directly to the front of the screen without the need to steer them.

He said although the project was still in the research and development stage, the company expected to produce the first prototype displays by the end of the year.

Story date: Thursday 29 April

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.