Invisible weapon
Woody Norris: Hypersonic sound and other inventions, TED
Pay attention from 10:15 min. I have put written transcription under the video.
0:18
I became an inventor by accident.
0:20
I was out of the air force in 1956. No, no, that's not true:
0:25
I went in in 1956, came out in 1959,
0:28
was working at the University of Washington,
0:30
and I came up with an idea, from reading a magazine article,
0:32
for a new kind of a phonograph tone arm.
0:35
Now, that was before cassette tapes, C.D.s, DVDs --
0:38
any of the cool stuff we've got now.
0:40
And it was an arm that,
0:42
instead of hinging and pivoting as it went across the record,
0:46
went straight: a radial, linear tracking tone arm.
0:50
And it was the hardest invention I ever made, but it got me started,
0:54
and I got really lucky after that.
0:56
And without giving you too much of a tirade,
0:58
I want to talk to you about an invention I brought with me today:
1:01
my 44th invention. No, that's not true either.
1:05
Golly, I'm just totally losing it.
1:07
My 44th patent; about the 15th invention.
1:10
I call this hypersonic sound.
1:13
I'm going to play it for you in a couple minutes,
1:15
but I want to make an analogy before I do
1:17
to this.
1:20
I usually show this hypersonic sound and people will say,
1:23
That's really cool, but what's it good for?
1:26
And I say, What is the light bulb good for?
1:29
Sound, light: I'm going to draw the analogy.
1:32
When Edison invented the light bulb, pretty much looked like this.
1:35
Hasn't changed that much.
1:37
Light came out of it in every direction.
1:40
Before the light bulb was invented,
1:42
people had figured out how to put a reflector behind it,
1:45
focus it a little bit;
1:47
put lenses in front of it,
1:49
focus it a little bit better.
1:51
Ultimately we figured out how to make things like lasers
1:54
that were totally focused.
1:57
Now, think about where the world would be today
1:59
if we had the light bulb,
2:03
but you couldn't focus light;
2:05
if when you turned one on it just went wherever it wanted to.
2:10
That's the way loudspeakers pretty much are.
2:13
You turn on the loudspeaker,
2:15
and after almost 80 years of having those gadgets,
2:18
the sound just kind of goes where it wants.
2:21
Even when you're standing in front of a megaphone,
2:23
it's pretty much every direction.
2:25
A little bit of differential, but not much.
2:28
If the light bulb was the way the speaker is,
2:31
and you couldn't focus or sharpen the edges or define it,
2:34
we wouldn't have that, or movies in general,
2:39
or computers, or T.V. sets,
2:42
or C.D.s, or DVDs -- and just go down the list
2:45
of what the importance is
2:47
of being able to focus light.
2:50
Now, after almost 80 years of having sound,
2:54
I thought it was about time that we figure out
2:56
a way to put sound where you want to.
3:00
I have a couple of units.
3:02
That guy there was made for a demo I did yesterday early in the day
3:04
for a big car maker in Detroit who wants to put them in a car --
3:07
small version, over your head --
3:09
so that you can actually get binaural sound in a car.
3:13
What if I could aim sound the way I aim light?
3:18
I got this waterfall I recorded in my back yard.
3:21
Now, you're not going to hear a thing unless it hits you.
3:25
Maybe if I hit the side wall it will bounce around the room.
3:28
(Applause)
3:31
The sound is being made right next to your ears. Is that cool?
3:35
(Applause)
3:43
Because I have some limited time, I'll cut it off for a second,
3:45
and tell you about how it works and what it's good for.
3:48
Course, like light, it's great to be able to put sound
3:51
to highlight a clothing rack, or the cornflakes, or the toothpaste,
3:54
or a talking plaque in a movie theater lobby.
3:57
Sony's got an idea -- Sony's our biggest customers right now.
4:01
They tried this back in the '60s
4:03
and were too smart, and so they gave up.
4:05
But they want to use it -- seriously.
4:08
There's a mix an inventor has to have.
4:10
You have to be kind of smart,
4:12
and though I did not graduate from college doesn't mean I'm stupid,
4:16
because you cannot be stupid and do very much in the world today.
4:19
Too many other smart people out there. So.
4:21
I just happened to get my education in a little different way.
4:23
I'm not at all against education.
4:26
I think it's wonderful; I think sometimes people,
4:28
when they get educated, lose it:
4:31
they get so smart they're unwilling to look at things that they know better than.
4:35
And we're living in a great time right now,
4:38
because almost everything's being explored anew.
4:41
I have this little slogan that I use a lot, which is:
4:44
virtually nothing --
4:46
and I mean this honestly --
4:48
has been invented yet.
4:50
We're just starting.
4:52
We're just starting to really discover the laws of nature and science and physics.
4:56
And this is, I hope, a little piece of it.
4:58
Sony's got this vision back -- to get myself on track --
5:02
that when you stand in the checkout line in the supermarket,
5:05
you're going to watch a new T.V. channel.
5:07
They know that when you watch T.V. at home,
5:09
because there are so many choices
5:11
you can change channels, miss their commercials.
5:15
A hundred and fifty-one million people every day stand in the line at the supermarket.
5:20
Now, they've tried this a couple years ago and it failed,
5:22
because the checker gets tired of hearing the same message
5:24
every 20 minutes, and reaches out, turns off the sound.
5:28
And, you know, if the sound isn't there, the sale typically isn't made.
5:31
For instance, like, when you're on an airplane, they show the movie,
5:34
you get to watch it for free;
5:36
when you want to hear the sound, you pay.
5:38
And so ABC and Sony have devised this new thing
5:42
where when you step in the line in the supermarket --
5:45
initially it'll be Safeways. It is Safeways;
5:48
they're trying this in three parts of the country right now --
5:50
you'll be watching TV.
5:52
And hopefully they'll be sensitive
5:54
that they don't want to offend you with just one more outlet.
5:56
But what's great about it, from the tests that have been done, is,
5:59
if you don't want to hear it,
6:01
you take about one step to the side and you don't hear it.
6:04
So, we create silence as much as we create sound.
6:08
ATMs that talk to you; nobody else hears it.
6:11
Sit in bed, two in the morning, watch TV;
6:13
your spouse, or someone, is next to you, asleep;
6:17
doesn't hear it, doesn't wake up.
6:19
We're also working on noise canceling things like snoring, noise from automobiles.
6:25
I have been really lucky with this technology:
6:29
all of a sudden as it is ready, the world is ready to accept it.
6:34
They have literally beat a path to our door.
6:36
We've been selling it since about last September, October,
6:39
and it's been immensely gratifying.
6:42
If you're interested in what it costs -- I'm not selling them today --
6:44
but this unit, with the electronics and everything,
6:46
if you buy one, is around a thousand bucks.
6:48
We expect by this time next year,
6:50
it'll be hundreds, a few hundred bucks, to buy it.
6:52
It's not any more pricey than regular electronics.
6:56
Now, when I played it for you, you didn't hear the thunderous bass.
7:00
This unit that I played goes from about 200 hertz to above the range of hearing.
7:05
It's actually emitting ultrasound -- low-level ultrasound --
7:09
that's about 100,000 vibrations per second.
7:12
And the sound that you're hearing,
7:14
unlike a regular speaker on which all the sound is made on the face,
7:18
is made out in front of it, in the air.
7:21
The air is not linear, as we've always been taught.
7:25
You turn up the volume just a little bit --
7:27
I'm talking about a little over 80 decibels --
7:30
and all of a sudden the air begins to corrupt signals you propagate.
7:34
Here's why: the speed of sound is not a constant. It's fairly slow.
7:39
It changes with temperature and with barometric pressure.
7:43
Now, imagine, if you will, without getting too technical,
7:46
I'm making a little sine wave here in the air.
7:49
Well, if I turn up the amplitude too much,
7:52
I'm having an effect on the pressure,
7:55
which means during the making of that sine wave,
7:58
the speed at which it is propagating is shifting.
8:01
All of audio as we know it
8:04
is an attempt to be more and more perfectly linear.
8:08
Linearity means higher quality sound.
8:12
Hypersonic sound is exactly the opposite:
8:16
it's 100 percent based on non-linearity.
8:20
An effect happens in the air, it's a corrupting effect of the sound --
8:25
the ultrasound in this case -- that's emitted,
8:28
but it's so predictable
8:30
that you can produce very precise audio out of that effect.
8:34
Now, the question is, where's the sound made?
8:37
Instead of being made on the face of the cone,
8:39
it's made at literally billions of little independent points
8:43
along this narrow column in the air,
8:47
and so when I aim it towards you,
8:49
what you hear is made right next to your ears.
8:52
I said we can shorten the column,
8:55
we can spread it out to cover the couch.
8:57
I can put it so that one ear hears one speaker,
9:00
the other ear hears the other. That's true binaural sound.
9:04
When you listen to stereo on your home system,
9:07
your both ears hear both speakers.
9:10
Turn on the left speaker sometime
9:12
and notice you're hearing it also in your right ear.
9:14
So, the stage is more restricted --
9:17
the sound stage that's supposed to spread out in front of you.
9:20
Because the sound is made in the air along this column,
9:23
it does not follow the inverse square law,
9:25
which says it drops off about two thirds
9:28
every time you double the distance:
9:30
6dB every time you go from one meter, for instance, to two meters.
9:35
That means you go to a rock concert or a symphony,
9:38
and the guy in the front row gets the same level
9:40
as the guy in the back row, now, all of a sudden.
9:42
Isn't that terrific?
9:45
So, we've been, as I say, very successful, very lucky,
9:48
in having companies catch the vision of this,
9:51
from cars -- car makers who want to put a stereo system in the front for the kids,
9:55
and a separate system in the back --
9:57
oh, no, the kids aren't driving today.
9:59
(Laughter)
10:00
I was seeing if you were listening.
10:02
Actually, I haven't had breakfast yet.
10:04
A stereo system in the front for mom and dad,
10:08
and maybe there's a little DVD player in the back for the kids,
10:11
and the parents don't want to be bothered with that,
10:13
or their rap music or whatever.
10:15
So, again, this idea of being able to put sound anywhere you want to
10:18
is really starting to catch on.
10:20
It also works for transmitting and communicating data.
10:24
It also works five times better underwater.
10:27
We've got the military -- have just deployed some of these into Iraq,
10:31
where you can put fake troop movements
10:34
quarter of a mile away on a hillside.
10:36
(Laughter)
10:39
Or you can whisper in the ear of a supposed terrorist some Biblical verse.
10:43
(Laughter)
10:45
I'm serious. And they have these infrared devices
10:51
that can look at their countenance,
10:54
and see a fraction of a degree Kelvin in temperature shift
10:58
from 100 yards away when they play this thing.
11:01
And so, another way of hopefully determining who's friendly and who isn't.
11:05
We make a version with this which puts out 155 decibels.
11:10
Pain is 120.
11:12
So it allows you to go nearly a mile away and communicate with people,
11:16
and there can be a public beach just off to the side,
11:18
and they don't even know it's turned on.
11:20
We sell those to the military presently for about 70,000 dollars,
11:24
and they're buying them as fast as we can make them.
11:26
We put it on a turret with a camera, so that when they shoot at you,
11:31
you're over there, and it's there.
11:34
I have a bunch of other inventions.
11:36
I invented a plasma antenna, to shift gears.
11:38
Looked up at the ceiling of my office one day --
11:41
I was working on a ground-penetrating radar project --
11:45
and my physicist CEO came in and said, "We have a real problem.
11:49
We're using very short wavelengths.
11:52
We've got a problem with the antenna ringing.
11:54
When you run very short wavelengths,
11:56
like a tuning fork the antenna resonates,
11:58
and there's more energy coming out of the antenna
12:00
than there is the backscatter from the ground
12:02
that we're trying to analyze, taking too much processing."
12:05
I says, "Why don't we make an antenna that only exists when you want it?
12:10
Turn it on; turn it off.
12:13
That's a fluorescent tube refined."
12:18
I just sold that for a million and a half dollars, cash.
12:21
I took it back to the Pentagon after it got declassified,
12:24
when the patent issued, and told the people back there about it,
12:28
and they laughed, and then I took them back a demo and they bought.
12:30
(Laughter)
12:32
Any of you ever wore a Jabber headphone -- the little cell headphones?
12:37
That's my invention. I sold that for seven million dollars.
12:39
Big mistake: it just sold for 80 million dollars two years ago.
12:43
I actually drew that up on a little crummy Mac computer
12:46
in my attic at my house,
12:49
and one of the many designs which they have now
12:52
is still the same design I drew way back when.
12:54
So, I've been really lucky as an inventor.
12:57
I'm the happiest guy you're ever going to meet.
13:01
And my dad died before he realized anybody in the family
13:06
would maybe, hopefully, make something out of themselves.
13:09
You've been a great audience. I know I've jumped all over the place.
13:11
I usually figure out what my talk is when I get up in front of a group.
13:14
Let me give you, in the last minute,
13:16
one more quick demo of this guy,
13:19
for those of you that haven't heard it.
13:22
Can never tell if it's on.
13:24
If you haven't heard it, raise your hand.
13:29
Getting it over there?
13:32
Get the cameraman.
13:35
Yeah, there you go.
13:37
I've got a Coke can opening that's right in your head; that's really cool.
13:40
Thank you once again.
13:42
Appreciate it very much.
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