Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'

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Gas-powered television

Electricity is so passé

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A series of parallel horizontal tubes with holes bored in them at regular intervals, each soundproofed and carrying flammable gas. A speaker is situated at the end of each tube and the gas is lit along the holes. Various sounds are played lasting exactly as long as the time taken for the sound to travel the length of the tubes, carefully designed to generate particular patterns of wave. The denser parts of each wave produce higher and brighter flames than the more rarefied parts. A mirror is placed above the array at an angle to allow the picture to be viewed without the danger of burns.

At the other end, a fairly conventional camera provides signals, each consisting of a sound based on the brightness of the horizontal strips of the image before the camera. The signal is fed to the speaker.

What i'd like to do with this is get rid of the electrical component entirely.

—	nineteenthly, Mar 04 2009

Rubens' Tube http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Rubens%27_Tube
Source of this idea. [nineteenthly, Mar 04 2009]

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What would be fun is to look at one of those micromirror projector ICs with a magnifying glass, watching it flutter with color close up

—	beanangel, Jan 02 2020

It seems to me that the camera needs to do some kind of spatial Fourier transform of the brightness along each horizontal line of the image, to generate the signal that gets played into that line's Rubens tube. Fortunately, I believe it's somewhat practical to do Fourier transforms without electricity. I don't know how the standing wave requirement affects that, though.

—	notexactly, Jan 02 2020

A liquid surface can play a multitude of wave forms initiated by mechanical flippers at the pools edge. Conversion of the molecules between liquid and gas states must be proportion to the positional wave form and could drive fueling of tubes. Yes ? or rubbish.

Or even just pressure flammable gas through jets.

—	wjt, Jan 03 2020

You could forgo the tubes in that case, maybe, if the gas can just be combusted above the liquid surface. It reminds me of a thought I had the other week, too: can a Chladni plate display arbitrary images if fed with Fourier-transformed signals?

—	notexactly, Jan 03 2020

I am guessing the particles would have to be a uniform, known constant, to calculate transitional patterns. A Chladni pattern is formed on a set frequency and a picture would be a manipulation of the transitional change to and from those set frequencies. There would be a spatial computation to know where around the edge of the plate to inject the next partial frequency if just adding frequencies one after another. If trying to do all the additive frequencies at once, I don't image there being enough room on the edge.

—	wjt, Jan 03 2020

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