Every year, thousands of tourists flock to the California coastal city of Long Beach, the last resting place of the ocean liner Queen Mary-a notable showcase of what was once state-of-the-art technology. But for a select group of visitors last May, the city's main attraction was not a memento of the past but a technology of the future: a dime-thin sheet of glass 14 centimeters along the diagonal whose unparalleled ability to exhibit ultrabright colors and process high-clarity video images holds the potential to have far greater impact on the world than any single ship, no matter how splendid.

Based on a technology called organic light-emitting diodes, the prototype screen was unveiled by Eastman Kodak and Sanyo Electric at the annual conference of the Society of Information Display, the industry's top professional group. As the screen was put through its paces, running images from video cassette, DVD and digital tape, even grizzled veterans of the flat-panel industry who packed into the Kodak booth came away goggle-eyed. Little wonder. Organic light-emitting diodes are shaping up as a superdisplay: brighter, thinner, lighter and faster than liquid crystal displays. They also take less power to run, offer higher contrast, look equally bright from all angles and have the potential to be much cheaper to manufacture than their conventional counterparts.