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Turn Your Head Into Speakers
Roland Piquepaille writes "A small company based in Iowa has developed products made with a "smart" metal that can turn your walls or your head into speakers. "Last August, Etrema -- an innovative technology firm nestled in the cornfields of Ames, Iowa -- started selling those chrome discs for $1,500 a pair. Called Whispering Windows, they can turn any wall, window, or drab conference table into a speaker." The author tried the technology, and even if she needed a full bottle of Tylenol after usage, said "it's not every day that your head serves as a piece of stereo equipment." This overview tells you more about this "magic" metal, the Terfenol, which is a combination of terbium and dysprosium. The article also says that we can soon expect pirated versions of Terfenol coming from China."
Now if they can just wire the Discman inside your skull someplace too..
...no wonder the voices in my head sound like the Rolling Stones.
Now if they would only quit playing "Sympathy for the Devil".
-mark
I wonder...will god nullify their patent because of prior art? ;-)
eclecti.cc
From the Article: "Etrema is now trying to secure a major retailer to sell a $300 portable version called the Presenter, aimed at business travelers, that can plug into laptops and give any room a top-quality sound system for presentations. A toy version, the Soundbug, is available for $20 from Amazon and OfficeDepot.com. Despite the poorer sound quality, teenage boys seem to like it" Have you ever heard the SoundBug? It sounds like the cheap plastic it is. I think there is a huge market for the ability to turn various items into a quality audio transmitter.
Be Alert, the world needs more Lerts!
If Mr. Anderson would have had that in Matrix, he could have really pissed of that agent in that questioning scene...
;-)
Agent: "What good is a phone call...if you're unable to speak!"
Neo turns on his head speakers
Neo: "Wadda say?"
Take it from somebody who shelled out the $30 for one of those things, they suck. Not just a little bit, but a lot. The thing rarely worked on the surfaces I'd put it on and on the surfaces it did work on, it still sounded like a dying cat. Not to mention that it is about the flimsiest thing I've ever used. It broke after only 2 weeks, though I can honestly say I wasn't heart broken.
Sure the SoundBug is a cool gadget but I strongly doubt it's even close to the product quality of the $300 this company is selling.
One wealthy businessman handed Etrema $1.5 million to stop the slight vibrations on his yacht when he hit top speeds. Terfenol did the trick, allowing him to dine at sea without having his meal shimmy off the plate. [And] a local church hired the firm to build a special pew so that a deaf person could hear the service.
This interests me more than the original article. How does a speaker-like material stop vibrations? Sure sound is a vibration... but to cancel out another sound/vibration it would have play the inverse sound at exactly the same time to cancel it out.
I'm assume the pew above just converted the sounds to either physical vibrations which the person could feel... or just adjusted the frequency to something that could be better heard/perceived.
Wire this up to create a "noise canceling" device and you might have something.
Specifically, they are intended for bass reproduction, but that's the only frequency domain where the material of the cone isn't having a dramatic effect on the sound quality, so I wouldn't necessarily want full range production from whatever random materials I can find.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
It wasn't that popular. I think he said it was called something like a "Bonophone" or some combination of "bone" and "phone", but Googling for it this morning just comes up with a lot of links to naughty sites. Does anybody know if this really existed and what it was called?
This system is not designed as a speaker, per se, but it is audible from near the wall. I have no idea what flavor of unobtanium is used for these, but I suspect they probably cost at least $1500, based on the military's track record.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
a local church hired the firm to build a special pew so that a deaf person could hear the service
This is the most intriguing thing about this. Would a deaf person be able to "hear" using the "head-as-speaker" technique?
Because of the poorer sound quality, teenage boys seem to like it.
If you haven't listens to todays music. Low quality speakers only help make it better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Industrial Physicist has an interesting article (PDF file) on rare earth elements that mentions terbium and dysprosium. According to the article, 3.6 kg of dysprosium will set you back about $50,000 US.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Granted, making this material would be a violation of US patent law (and Chinese patent law, to the extent it exists), but you're making it sound like the patent has been obfuscated, which shouldn't be.
Litigious bastards
The ~NOLs are inventions of the Naval Ordinance Lab, curiously located out there in the corn fields; famously NiTiNOL and TerFeNOL, not exactly the the most overwhelmingly original names, they do sound techy.
The "latest" material, terfenol, exploits the giant magnetostrictive effect, which sounds even more brand new, but it isn't, having been discovered in the 1840s.
The high strain versions of this (and the thermally actuated "shape memory alloys") were developed in the 1940s for use in high powered sonar. They are generally used as replacements for voice coils and for the same reason. If you want to actuate your domestic structure, you can use a big one and keep it cool with LN2.
These materials are far too old to be covered by existing patents, so they're fabricated all over the world. Indeed, chinese manufacturers are in production.