A digital display that consists of two sheets of glass separated by a sealed-in, normally transparent, liquid crystal material; the outer surface of each glass sheet has a transparent conductive coating such as tin oxide or indium oxide, with the viewing-side coating etched into character-forming segments that have leads going to the edges of the display; a voltage applied between front and back electrode coatings disrupts the orderly arrangement of the molecules, darkening the liquid enough to form visible characters even though no light is generated. Abbreviated LCD.