Bone conduction headphones
By Dusan Belic on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 9:17 AM PST In Accessories, Events
In case you haven’t heard about the bone conduction technology, you should know that the main idea behind this is in transferring sound using human bones. To put in other words, such headphones doesn’t necessarily have to be in your ears — holding them in a proximity of ears should be good enough.
I admit I’m quite a sceptic for this kind of gizmos, though I would love to give them a try. Plus, the one on the image above are waterproof, meaning you could actually take them on pool — although I don’t understand how would they stay connected with a phone or a portable media player? (Bluetooth?) Anyway, Morito has presented the first (that I’m aware of) such headphones at Wireless Japan 2007, and will start selling them somewhere in August for $80.
[Via: Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]
Bone conduction is already available in US for less than $70.00
http://www.jowow.com/jowow/productInfo.html?productId=25
The Story of Bone Conduction
It is how we normally hear
We all hear sounds through both our bones and our ear drums. Most sounds are heard by our ear drums. The ear drum converts the sound waves to vibrations and transmits them to the cochlea (or inner ear). But in some cases vibrations are heard directly by the inner ear – bypassing your ear drums. In fact, this is one of the ways you hear your own voice. This is also how whales hear.
Ludwig Van Beehoven
Invented by Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven, the famous 18th century composer who was partially deaf, discovered Bone Conduction. Beethoven found a way to hear music through his jawbone by attaching a rod to his piano and clenching it in his teeth.
Perfected by Audio Bone
Since Beethoven there have been many attempts at bone conduction listening, but none have provided true high fidelity quality sound – until now. It took many years of work on our part, but Audio Bone now has 4 patents pending.