It took eight years of research and testing but scientists at a Queen's University lab are ready to unveil the latest advance in computer technology: paper.

What the researchers at the Kingston, Ont., university are calling the world's first interactive paper computer feels and looks like a small sheet of translucent paper.

Forget the bookmark menu; you'll be able to dog-ear your favourite pages on a device that right now looks like a flexible conference badge, says creator Roel Vertegaal.

"You can use it as an e-book reader, you can use it as a phone, you can use it as an MP3 player — it has all that functionality in it," says Vertegaal, director of the Queen's Human Media Lab.

The paper computer is a 9.5-centimetre piece of flexible film that basically has the same functions as a smartphone. Vertegaal says that the prototype — called the Paperphone — is still hooked up to a computer, but once it's developed as a product, all the electronics will be contained in the one sheet.

"If this were a product, it would likely have a small rigid circuit on the left-hand side and then it would have the flexible display sticking out of that."

The lab is unveiling the smartphone prototype next Tuesday at the Association of Computing Machinery's CHI 2011 (Computer Human Interaction) conference in Vancouver.

While the prototype has limitations, Vertegaal says the point is to prove the principle and to show what can be done with flexible displays.

Because it didn't "make a heck of a lot of sense" to put buttons on a thin piece of film, and pressing on the film messes up the display, the lab put "bend sensors" in a layer behind the screen, which detect and interpret bends in the page.

"So you can bend the top in order to page forward or make a bookmark, you can navigate left and right on your home screen in order to open an icon, and you can make a call by squeezing the paper so that it curves, and then if you want to stop the call you pop it back into shape," he says.

Vertegaal saw the first flexible displays on the market about eight years ago and realized they would be as much of a game-changer as the LCD display had been.

"There's not that many of these revolutions so I figured we need to jump on the bandwagon and just go do it."

The research program went ahead with provincial and federal government assistance, and the prototypes are being built with the help of the flexible display centre at Arizona State University and E Ink, a Taiwanese company that's a leader in the field.

As the screens get bigger, Vertegaal predicts that the paper computer could change the way we do business.

Instead of having a lot of windows open on a computer screen, "every window on your screen . . . would be a piece of paper, except it would be electronic and you'd be able to write on it, annotate it, send it off to email and all sorts of other things."

Another bonus is that none of these screens would use power while not in use.

Vertegaal would like to see paper computers sell for about $1 a sheet. He figures that would require an investment of at least $150 million — which means outside funding.

Vertegaal says the lab has been in touch with some corporations that might be interested in developing the prototype, though he named no names.

"It's hard to predict, but I'd say that in about 10 years, it's possible that everybody would be using this."

kcovert@postmedia.com