 |
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 ) |
Leave a comment:
Tediously, spammers have returned. So, send me your comments to bill at the site name (be sure to mention the page) and I'll post them. Thanks!
Current News Articles
Robotic Barber Programmed With a Number of Styles
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
Caterpillar Electric Mining Loader Not Yet Ready For Moon
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
Centipede Robots Down On The Farm
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
Anthropic's Claude AI Creates Legal Citation From Whole Cloth
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
Students Vie For Lunar Regolith Mining Robot Prize
'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.
'They Erased My Memory' Says Ariana Grande
'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'
Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'
Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
Robot Hand Creeps Along, Separate From It's Owner
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
