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Researchers Make Paper Speakers For LCD TVs
narramissic writes "Engineers at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) have developed stereo speakers in paper (video) that are are well suited for thin devices like LCD TVs and will be used in cars starting next year. According to an ITworld article, 'The special paper is made by sandwiching thin electrodes that receive audio signals and a prepolarized diaphragm into the paper structure. A special Flexpeaker adapter between the MP3 player and the speaker is used to play music through the paper.' ITRI says it hopes in the coming year to develop a chip that will do away with the adapter and allow people to plug a digital music player directly into the speaker. ITRI is also working on wireless technologies and will show off its first Bluetooth enabled paper speaker in July."
They've been making paper speakers for a long time. This seems to be a driverless paper speaker, which apparently is a big deal. I guess technically the prepolarized diaphragm *is* the driver, but it isn't your standard cone / cylinder shape.
There is a war going on for your mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectric
So they rediscovered the reverse piezoelectric effect and then glued it to some paper.
Wow, I guess the 50 year old earphones on my crystal radio are cutting edge...
I have to return some videotapes...
What would be cool is....
There are thousands of tiny diaphragms on that paper.
If they can address them individually then they have a wavefront capable speaker.
You can do things with wavefront reproducing speaker systems that make 7.1 seem like a child's toy.
It's a little like the difference between holography and normal photography.