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

The heck with headphones!

[loftwyr]

I want them to make me a suit of that stuff!

Re:Demolition

[phillymjs]

Damn you for beating me to making the reference while I was looking up the relevant passage!

"Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open ambient sound. Every hi fi set in the world, every radio, every television, every cassette recorder, every woofer, every tweeter, every mid-range driver in the world quietly turned itself on. Every tin can, every dust bin, every window, every car, every wine glass, every sheet of rusty metal became activated as an acoustically perfect sounding board. Before the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the very ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address system ever built. But there was no concert, no music, no fanfare, just a simple message."

~Philly

Re:That is making a speaker inside things

[Walt Dismal]

If they can do it with a greeting card, I imagine they could create product packaging that plays sounds. How about a PC game box that plays the sounds from the game, for example American McGee's Alice which had interesting tracks?

Re:Stereo = misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm? just position them at the far ends of the card. Don't use the whole card as a sound source.
Would allow two sources almost a foot apart, enough for a human to pick up stereo.

THIS is how the military should be making money

[ecavalli]

Sure, taxes are great, but I'd like to see how much cash the military makes on the amazing tech their scientists come up with.

Between stuff like this (mil-spec gear modified for use in civilian life) and the medical breakthroughs they've created over the years, if the military were a standard corporation, they'd have cash coming out of every orifice not used for firing projectiles or enticing teenagers to join their ranks.

This is nothing new - again.

[waterwingz]

NXT has been flogging this technology for years. This is nothing new but every few years they seem to get the media to think it is.