Three of the settings produce the primary colors red, green, or blue, while the fourth setting produces black, by reflecting no visible wavelengths. Iridigm claims pixels 30 microns by 40 microns area, giving 80,000 pixels per square centimeter. They haven't yet solved the problem of connecting voltages to them at such dimensions, but they hope to make practical demonstrations at 100 pixels per inch. The viewing angle increases the effective distance between the semi-reflecting surfaces, and it can be found by dividing by the cosine of angle. Maybe Charlie Kalt has the ultimate winning system after all.
Ignorance is to blame.
Just plain old ignorance. And in some cases the hard-boiled politics of historians, who for reasons known only to them, continue to perpetuate the myth even when the error's been clearly pointed out. It sticks like a burr under the saddle of John W. Wagner that in history classes throughout the United States, Thomas Alva Edison is generally celebrated as the inventor of electricity. The honor, he insists, goes to Nikola Tesla, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1884 at the age of 27 with just four cents in his pocket and a book of poems he'd authored. At his death in 1943, Tesla held all of the seminal patents on his worldwide system of polyphase alternating current - or AC power.