The Bone Conductor
Posted on September 16, 2004
Filed Under Music, Technology |
A wristwatch phone that lets you listen by sticking a finger in your ear, an MP3 player that vibrates the bones in your skull to play music that only you can hear…
Those are just a few examples of “bone-conduction,” a technology that uses bones to transmit sound waves throughout the listener’s body. The technology has been around for a while, used in devices for hard-of-hearing individuals. Instead of sound waves being transmitted through air, through the outer ear to the inner ear, the sound waves stimulate the bone directly. Popular body locations used as the entry point are the jawbone and head. Right now, the phone that uses this technology is only for sale in Japan.
Other devices are described in this article published on Wired News.
Similar technology was also used during WWII for microphones. The straps you would see around pilots necks were actually microphones that would pick up the vibrations directly from the person’s neck instead of trying to put a microphone in front of their mouth in a potentially noisy situation.