It may look like a piece of tin foil. Funnily enough that was how it all started, when Dr Duncan Billson and Professor David Hutchins of the University of Warwick experimented by using two sheets of household foil and an insulating layer of baking paper to produce sound.

It may look like a piece of tin foil. Funnily enough that was how it all started, when Dr Duncan Billson (pictured, right) and Professor David Hutchins of the University of Warwick experimented by using two sheets of household foil and an insulating layer of baking paper to produce sound.

Those experiments came on quite a way – they ditched the baking paper and replaced the tin foil with an assembly of thin materials, some conducting and some insulating, which vibrates to generate sound when excited by electrical signals.

Steve Couchman, CEO of the company created to commercialise the invention, Warwick Audio Technologies, says it has generated interest already from car manufacturers. Other potential applications include public address systems used in passenger terminals and shopping centres.
‘The sound produced by flat, flexible loudspeakers can be directed straight at its intended audience,’ claims Couchman.

‘The sound volume and quality does not deteriorate as it does in conventional speakers.’
At less than a quarter of a millimetre thick, the speakers are even billed as heralding ‘the beginning of the end for conventional speakers’. Just don’t use them to wrap your sandwiches or it could be the beginning of the end for you.