Material Turns All Surfaces into Stereo

An anonymous reader writes "According to James Bullen of NXT, 'The UK ministry of defense was experimenting with a way to dampen the sound in helicopters and developed a honeycombed material that did the opposite — conducted sound.' Cambridge-based NXT christened it "SurfaceSound" and arranged for it to be crafted into Toyota cars, Gateway computers, Hallmark greeting cards and more. NXT is working on ways to put the technology to use in touch screens that promise to be part of a new rage in 'natural interfaces' for computers, mobile telephones, televisions and other electronic devices. Toyota has SurfaceSound in the head liners of four of its car models. NXT recently made a deal with greeting card giant Hallmark to use the technology in 'big cards with big sound' when opened, Bullen said."

Comments

Stereo = misnomer

[themushroom]

Stereo means there are two sound sources. Not to say that one couldn't put two separate panels (which I presume is the case with the car systems) to handle each channel, but in the case of the greeting cards it's gonna be monaural.

A THUNDEROUS Round of Applause

[davidsyes]

To the UK government and NXT for turning what would have been a money-sucking venture (in the near-term application, assuming war/conflict/helo-deployment NOT inevitable) into a commercial spin-off and apparent success.

(No, I'm not dissin' DARPA, I just don't know of/haven't seen in the new an intended DOD effort that nearly-IMMEDIATELY spun off into commercial success. I don't doubt they exist, I just have to Google them...)

Now, I wonder if those sound conductors will work in love chambers... gotta keep the neighbors awake...

figures

[Tablizer]

all the useful ideas come from either porn or war