Slashdot Mirror
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."
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