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Imagineered Products
and Services
Examples of Imagineered Products &
Services
Updated on:
Monday, September 17, 2007 02:22 PM |
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Imagineered Products
& Services:
Examples of
Imagineered Products & Services
Introduction to Wind
Energy -
Internet Business
Ideas |
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This
section describes some products and service ideas that have either come from my
imagination as long as 40 years ago or are based on scientific research that hint at some
new products. Some of the ideas listed have since become commercially available. In
addition to the ideas listed below, I also have some more detailed discussions. |
DOCUMENT DIGITIZING SERVICES
(12)
If you are looking for a new service to offer, consider a digitizing service. Many
libraries are filled with old and rapidly deteriorating books, magazines and newspapers.
Unless these documents are somehow saved the readers in the next human generation will not
have the benefit and wisdom of their content. I believe that one way to save these
documents is to transfer their printed text information onto computer files. The printed
materials themselves may be lost in time but their contents could be saved. Large
collections of old documents could be digitized and recorded onto computer disks by the
service. With new erasable optical disks able to store some 500 books, large collections
could be offered for sale by the service. However, to keep from violating any copyright
laws the information converted must be considered to be in the public domain. Usually
books older than 70 years can be converted without any copyright complications. Other
information such as county, state and federal government records would automatically be
considered to be public documents. However, I suggest you check with a copyright/patent
lawyer to make sure you know what you can and can't digitize and resell.
The conversion process would begin by using a document scanner that
would analyze the printed words on each page and convert them into digital codes. These so
called "Optical Character Readers" or OCRs can accurately convert a page of
printed text into a computer file in a few minutes. Some more sophisticated units can
perform the task in just a few seconds. After the initial scanning process the computer
would analyze the words for proper spelling and highlight those words that were scanned
without 100% certainty (typically about one in 100 words). Those words would then have to
be interpreted and corrected by a human through the computer. Most books that have clear
printed text could be converted in about two days with a low cost scanner. Faster scanners
might reduce the required time to perhaps 4 hours per book. If a service could maintain a
4 hour per book average it could offer some 500 new books each year per scanner. With tens
of millions of documents awaiting the conversion process there should be plenty of work
for everyone wishing to provide such services. |
A MACHINE FOR PERFECT PITCH?
(Dave Wright --Wright Arm Technology) (13)
Have you ever wanted to sing in public as brilliantly as you could sing in the shower? In
the shower, your pitch control and voice timbre are enhanced by the acoustic resonance of
the shower enclosure. You may have noticed that some notes are "easy" to hit --
that there is a natural feedback which makes some tunes easy to sing. Unfortunately, as
the acoustics of the shower do not sound equally pleasing to an audience, the shower has
not been incorporated into opera as a device for voice assistance. Besides, most operatic
singers already have perfect or near perfect pitch. Now, using the marvels of electronic
feedback, the rest of us can also sing with perfect pitch. Here is how it is done. You
sing into a microphone. This signal is amplified and played back into the room. The
amplifier incorporates a comb filter. This filter and amplifier combination will amplify
only those components of the voice which are at preselected frequencies. Thus if the comb
frequencies are set to be the notes of the scale, the amplified voice will add to the
input voice while you are singing to cancel out the unwanted pitches and amplify the
desired frequencies. Depending on the gain setting, this system can make it virtually
impossible to sing a sour note. |
OPTICAL FIBERS CARRY SOLAR
ENERGY (14)
Many laboratories around the world have been experimenting with new methods to direct
sunlight wherever it is needed. Large sun tracking lenses mounted onto a building roof or
in a nearby field focus the solar energy onto fat optical fiber bundles. The typical one
inch diameter bundles are made from thousands of special individual optical glass fibers.
Once captured, the concentrated energy can be routed through walls, floors and around
corners to emerge several hundred feet away. Since the fibers do not efficiently conduct
the harmful ultraviolet or the heat producing infrared wavelengths, the light that emerges
from the bundle end has been found to be very beneficial to both plants and animals.
Plants seem to have an accelerated growth rate while some humans have been reporting
therapeutic benefits from the filtered sunlight. Many architects are exploring the use of
these small sunlight conductors to bring natural light into areas deep inside buildings.
Aerospace engineers are also experimenting with the methods to increase food production on
large spacecraft and on Moon or Mars bases. |
OPTICAL HETERODYNE METHODS
IMPROVE COMMUNICATIONS (15)
Students of radio are familiar with the classical super-heterodyne technique for radio
receivers. In brief, this method mixes the incoming radio signal frequencies with another
fixed local oscillator frequency. The result is both a sum and difference family of
frequencies that can be more easily amplified and separated from the background noise.
It is now possible to apply this same principle in the realm of
optical frequencies. Such methods are now being used with new semiconductor diode lasers
that emit very pure light of nearly one single wavelength. When the light is mixed with
another laser of a slightly different wavelength a sum and difference set of wavelengths
are produced. This technique promises to take full advantage of the nearly one quadrillion
hertz bandwidth that optical communications can provide. Since each laser diode could be
modulated in excess of 30 gigahertz it will be possible to have tens of thousands of
different optical color bands that could each contain tens of gigahertz of bandwidth.
The possibilities are limitless. Just think, this
technique could allow a single optical fiber to carry nearly all the telephone, television
and radio communications that occur in the U.S. at any given moment. |
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