According to a patent filed by Apple and approved on Thursday, the iPhone or iPad could eventually capture and store a fingerprint, an image, audio, and video of a thief who attempts to use the device after it is stolen.
Other directional patterns are produced by enclosing one side of the ribbon in an acoustic trap or baffle, allowing sound to reach only one side. The classic RCA Type 77-DX microphone has several externally adjustable positions of the internal baffle, allowing the selection of several response patterns ranging from "figure-eight" to "unidirectional". Such older ribbon microphones, some of which still provide high-quality sound reproduction, were once valued for this reason, but a good low-frequency response could be obtained only when the ribbon was suspended very loosely, which made them relatively fragile. Modern ribbon materials, including new nanomaterials,[27] have now been introduced that eliminate those concerns and even improve the effective dynamic range of ribbon microphones at low frequencies. Protective wind screens can reduce the danger of damaging a vintage ribbon, and also reduce plosive artifacts in the recording. Properly designed wind screens produce negligible treble attenuation. In common with other classes of dynamic microphone, ribbon microphones don't require phantom power; in fact, this voltage can damage some older ribbon microphones. Some new modern ribbon microphone designs incorporate a preamplifier and, therefore, do require phantom power, and circuits of modern passive ribbon microphones, i.e., those without the aforementioned preamplifier, are specifically designed to resist damage to the ribbon and transformer by phantom power. Also there are new ribbon materials available that are immune to wind blasts and phantom power.
iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 Patent Could Improve Video Calls | Phone Informer
Early microphones did not produce intelligible speech, until Alexander Graham Bell made improvements including a variable-resistance microphone/transmitter. Bell's liquid transmitter consisted of a metal cup filled with water with a small amount of sulfuric acid added. A sound wave caused the diaphragm to move, forcing a needle to move up and down in the water. The electrical resistance between the wire and the cup was then inversely proportional to the size of the water meniscus around the submerged needle. Elisha Gray filed a caveat for a version using a brass rod instead of the needle.[when?] Other minor variations and improvements were made to the liquid microphone by Majoranna, Chambers, Vanni, Sykes, and Elisha Gray, and one version was patented by Reginald Fessenden in 1903. These were the first working microphones, but they were not practical for commercial application. The famous first phone conversation between Bell and Watson took place using a liquid microphone.
Several approaches have been developed for effectively using a microphone in less-than-ideal acoustic spaces, which often suffer from excessive reflections from one or more of the surfaces (boundaries) that make up the space. If the microphone is placed in, or very close to, one of these boundaries, the reflections from that surface have the same timing as the direct sound, thus giving the microphone a hemispherical polar pattern and improved intelligibility. Initially, this was done by placing an ordinary microphone adjacent to the surface, sometimes in a block of acoustically transparent foam. Sound engineers Ed Long and Ron Wickersham developed the concept of placing the diaphragm parallel to and facing the boundary.[57] While the patent has expired, "Pressure Zone Microphone" and "PZM" are still active trademarks of Crown International, and the generic term boundary microphone is preferred. 2ff7e9595c
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