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Cone of Silence
Distortion field that limits the carrying power of voice or other vibration; it accomplishes noise reduction with an image-vibration 180 degrees out of phase. (Read the full article)
| "In my freshman dorm room at the University of Dayton, there was a spot where the sound of the fire alarm (which was constantly going off for no reason) was greatly diminished. Not exactly a cone of silence, though." (BobFunland 7/1/2004 12:24:09 AM ) |
| "The "cone of silence" has been produced. Noise Cancellation Technologies and other newer companies have taken their active-cancellation systems and put them on windows or plates to create-literally-a silent area nearby. Usually used to kill AMBIENT noise to allow conversation, I'm not sure it does much to prevent eavesdropping.
How effective? Around a running diesel generator, where talking is nearly impossible, in the silenced-area, it's pretty tolerable.
Bad side effect of all active cancellation technology, though: It is iffectively DOUBLING the acoustic energy in the environment, so standing wherever the benefit is lost is now TWICE as noisy. (One reason it was never seriously considered for a Museum exhibit I was working on some years ago.) Maxwell Smart (and Mel Brooks) probably deserve royalties..." ( 8/18/2004 6:40:33 PM ) |
| "In Arthur C. Clark's short story collection, "Tales from the White Heart". There is a tale told of a device called the Fenton Silencer which silenced an entire Opra. The other stories in the collection are very good and quite funny. Highly recomended." (Paul 1/11/2005 9:17:12 AM ) |
| "Forgot to mention the date. 1957 is when the book "Tales from the White Heart" was first published.
" (Paul 1/11/2005 9:30:49 AM ) |
| "there used to be an aircraft electronic landing approach device refered to as the cone of silence, on approach the pilot heard ...... if he was to far left and ----- if to far to the right if on correct approach he heard nothing through his headphones, hence in the 'cone of silence'" ( 7/8/2006 5:48:37 AM ) |
| "I don't think it was so much that the Get Smart version didn't work, as that they were being used wrong - each bubble created a silent area around the user, but since each user had their own bubble, they could not hear each other. (I remember a conference room scene, possibly from one of the movies, that had multiple bubbles around a table, which had the same working-but-useless effect.)" (uwiz 1/4/2007 2:19:48 PM ) |
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