> Presumably what you do is make a translucent layer which has inclusions
> inside it that refract the light. So the outer surfaces are smooth, yet
> you still get colour. Hard to see how you could do that cheaply though.

Well you could just make it in two parts, so long as the two materials 
had different refractive indices. A bit like how a CD is made. Maybe you 
could use some photo-etch process on the first layer, borrowed from IC 
manufacturing?

> Has anybody invented a UV coating that actually works yet?

Yes, people rely on them not to get skin cancer or go blind! Also the 
one on your car paint works. I'm sure you can find spectral response 
curves if you are interested.

> I'm sure things have changed. Just perhaps not as rapidly and
> dramatically as the original revolution.

You could argue that in some ways things are changing even faster now. 
Continuing with your plastics example, at the start hardly anyone used 
plastic and development was slow. Today plastic is used in almost 
everything and there are millions of different types. I'm sure if you 
plotted a graph of the number of new plastics invented against time it 
would be going upwards.

> This is very interesting. From what I can gather, the primary problem is
> the absurd amount of computer power required.

Indeed, it looks like they had to spend most of the effort trying to 
reduce the computing power needed whilst maintaining a decent image 
quality. Maybe in 5 or 10 years someone will come back to this 
technology and it will be able to take off.

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