Turn Your Head Into Speakers

By Roland Piquepaille

Last August, Etrema -- an innovative technology firm nestled in the cornfields of Ames, Iowa -- started selling those chrome discs for $1,500 a pair. Called Whispering Windows, they can turn any wall, window, or drab conference table into a speaker.

Here is a photograph of an installation at the headquarters of a computer maker (Credit: ETREMA Products, Inc. ).

Cora Daniels, our brave reporter, tells us about her experience with these disks.

Michael Conley, the company's president, tells me to stick my fingers in my ears. "Relax," he says as he places the cold disc on my forehead. "We're just turning your head into a speaker." A few seconds later, even though my ears are plugged, power chords blast through my skull. It feels like the loud crunch that fills my head when I bite into a tortilla chip, except the crunch is music. The stereo sound is inescapable. I can't say it's a pleasant experience -- afterward I will down a bottle of Tylenol -- but it's not every day that your head serves as a piece of stereo equipment.

Etrema has many other projects in the pipeline.

Whispering Windows is just the first of dozens of products that Etrema is hoping to launch in the near future, including a wireless version and an advanced sonar system for the U.S. Navy. The common ingredient in all of Etrema's offerings is something called Terfenol-D, a metal that changes its shape -- as quickly as 20,000 times a second