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From: baker@wbc.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: RE: Weirdness Electronics
Message-ID: <1990Nov2.142356.7835@decuac.dec.com>
Date: 2 Nov 90 14:01:13 GMT
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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In article <3897@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU 
 (Marvin Minsky) writes:

>>Then there's G. Pat Flanagan's Neurophone/Dolphin Communicator and, of course,
>>Pyramid Power...
> 
> 
>I wondered what happened to that "neurophone". I recall some person
>demonstrating it to me and Warren McCulloch in the '50s, but don't
>remember the details.  I think it was a smooth electrode that you move
.
.
.
>Anyway, I remember concluding that the effect was real but not very
>hi-fi, and I concluded it was probably due to electrostatic forces
>pulling on the facial skin; the high-frequency carrier produced this
>traction, and the drag would be proportional to the audio frequency
>modulation, which would thus produce a sonic vibration in the skin
>very close to the ear, perhaps transmitted through the tissues.  
> 
.
.
>Do you remember any more about it?

	I saw an implementation of this thing that used a pad which
	one pressed against the skin of the lower back (lumbar area).
	The pad contained a coil that was driven at some frequency in 
	the range of 100 KHz and then amplitude modulated by an audio 
	signal.  Apparently, people could hear the audio signal directly; 
	the device was tauted as a potential hearing replacement for deaf
	people.  I rather doubt that this device used tissue conduction, 
	but who knows.

	What impressed me most was that Pat Flanagan was only 16
	when he invented it.  I remember seeing him demonstrate it on
	a TV show, and later I found a multi-page spread in Life Magazine 
	(or maybe the Saturday Evening Post).
	
	Art Baker