Post by Shadow on Dec 22, 2005 23:20:37 GMT -5
News Scientist
# 15:17 20 December 2005
# NewScientist.com news service
# Barry Fox
For over 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled the world's weird and wonderful patent applications each week, digging out the most exciting, intriguing and even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is exclusively online. Scroll down for a roundup of previous Invention articles.
The inkjet-printer pen
The pen of the future will use inkjet technology to deliver a multitude of colours from its tip, according to recent filings from prolific patenter Silverbrook Research in Balmain, Australia.
Inkjet printer heads are now cheaply mass-produced and small enough to fit into the stem of a pen in place of a nib or ballpoint. Silverbrook’s pen body is about as thick as a fountain pen, with a battery-powered microelectromechanical print head near the tip that pumps out fine jets of ink from a replaceable cartridge.
A smooth roller point at the tip of the pen holds the jet at a fixed distance from the paper and pressing the point onto the paper switches the jet on and off. Varying the pressure varies the thickness of the line by controlling the number of jets that pump ink – a hard push makes a thick line and vice versa.
The roller point can also sense the direction of movement over the page and make the jet change shape to mimic the behaviour of a pen nib. And if the cartridge has separate chambers of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink, a switch on the side of pen will allow writing and drawing to be done in a rainbow of colours.
Read more about the inkjet pen design, here.
Double delay for pirates
Much effort is going into ways of making computer game and movie discs hard to copy, to foil copyright pirates. The latest, and perhaps the cleverest, comes from Philips. It exploits two unrelated features that already exist in the current DVD standard, in the new Blu-ray disc and also the Universal Media Disc, used by the PlayStation Portable games console.
# 15:17 20 December 2005
# NewScientist.com news service
# Barry Fox
For over 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled the world's weird and wonderful patent applications each week, digging out the most exciting, intriguing and even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is exclusively online. Scroll down for a roundup of previous Invention articles.
The inkjet-printer pen
The pen of the future will use inkjet technology to deliver a multitude of colours from its tip, according to recent filings from prolific patenter Silverbrook Research in Balmain, Australia.
Inkjet printer heads are now cheaply mass-produced and small enough to fit into the stem of a pen in place of a nib or ballpoint. Silverbrook’s pen body is about as thick as a fountain pen, with a battery-powered microelectromechanical print head near the tip that pumps out fine jets of ink from a replaceable cartridge.
A smooth roller point at the tip of the pen holds the jet at a fixed distance from the paper and pressing the point onto the paper switches the jet on and off. Varying the pressure varies the thickness of the line by controlling the number of jets that pump ink – a hard push makes a thick line and vice versa.
The roller point can also sense the direction of movement over the page and make the jet change shape to mimic the behaviour of a pen nib. And if the cartridge has separate chambers of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink, a switch on the side of pen will allow writing and drawing to be done in a rainbow of colours.
Read more about the inkjet pen design, here.
Double delay for pirates
Much effort is going into ways of making computer game and movie discs hard to copy, to foil copyright pirates. The latest, and perhaps the cleverest, comes from Philips. It exploits two unrelated features that already exist in the current DVD standard, in the new Blu-ray disc and also the Universal Media Disc, used by the PlayStation Portable games console.