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A portable cylinder player that plays metal rings that have a helical groove on the *inside*. The groove is on the inside so that they (the Rings{tm}) can be thrown in a bin and not get scratched up. The groove is recorded at 9,541 lines per inch and needle will track the groove and a very fine electrode
will pick up the recording. Audio Frequency Modulation will put the two stereo channels in one groove. The Ring spins on an outside inverted mandrel at 160 RPM. Written in the funny script on the outside is the title of the song. The player is bidirectional and will spin the Ring the other way if you put it in backwards. There will be several unique players, one for each good character. The controls are full logic and you can speed through the song in forward and reverse at up to 8x speed. There will be a built in speaker and a headphone jack and it will run on 1 AA battery.
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Why 9,541? (Only one question of the many that are possible.) |
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The score from lord of the rings will be exactly that long, or something like that. |
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I have voted for this, as it is the best new idea I have read today. Which might not appear a great endorsement. However, I take issue with the capacitance aspect, and would prefer a conventional groove: personally I think old-fashioned gramophones are far neater than your modern CD player. |
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What would the power source be? Clockwork? Or an army of Orcs fastened to treadmills? I think if you have a music medium as small as a ring, the player should be correspondingly very large, possibly on a comparable scale to Sarumen's tower: just slip the ring over the top of a pointed tower, and the player will begin. |
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Plus, of course, with a larger tower you are able to stack rings for longer playing time. |
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pottedstu: Well, you would have music to listen to while you waited to be rescued by a giant eagle. The "orcs and treadmill" power source idea is good too. |
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If you linked one up to a Palantir, you could maybe build a Sauron WatchMan or something ...... |
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(Humble apologies to JRR, by the way. We are not worthy....). |
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I think I've gone into shock, someone who isn't a complete moron has posted a sensible idea. I like it as well. |
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I think the player should be built into a big pointy hat, which comes right down over your ears, concealing anti-sound-leak headphones. You carry your collection of rings on a sash over one shoulder and across your body, and when you want to play one, you stick it on top of the point of the hat, and it spins around (just mind when you go through doorways). The hat will be quite heavy but that will do your posture good when you are sitting at your desk at work. Your hat will be visible above the walls of your cubicle, but your boss won't mind. Power source is inductance from the stray EM radiation coming out of your computer - so an automatic anti-static device too, what a good side-effect. |
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Sappho: I'd be concerned about gyroscopic effects. We don't have figures for the mass or diameter of the ring; nodding one's head could cause the hat to be forced sideways. So the earphones would have to clamp pretty hard over the ears (good for containing sound leakage), or maybe a chinstrap, or nails, or metal hooks into the ears and nostrils to keep it in place ? Even at 160 rpm, if the ring is sufficiently massive, and the hat sufficently tall, it will put a strain on the neck muscles, due to the leverage.
As to power, it's supposed to run from 1 "AA" battery. |
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I dunno. Orcs are decidedly unreliable as grunts go. The AA battery could be a better choice. |
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And if you happen across a ring with hidden writing, resist the urge to play it. |
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RayfordSteele: Yes, it's just so hard to get reilable Orcs these days. |
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From the figures I calculate that the ring is 0.120218006 inches thick (7 min 27 secs, 160 RPM, 9541 TPI), but that still doesn't tell us the diameter or wall thickness. |
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I think you only have to worry about playing the Ring and getting sent off on a dreadful Quest to Mordor if you have hairy feet. Do you have hairy feet ? I think this question should be answered immediately, for the sake of everyone's peace of mind (if any). |
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More appropriate to link this idea to Wagner's Ring Cycle, I would have thought. |
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The diameter will be 0.75 inches outside diameter, .55 inches inside diameter. There will be a 0.625 inch guard band on the outside edges of the groove. For your peace of mind, I do not have hairy feet. The ring is small so gyroscopicity will be minimal. |
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Two more things to talk about. 1.)Sarumen's phonograph using Gandalf as a tonearm. 2.) Gandalf's Incudescent (sic) light bulb on his staff which only lights up in the *absence* of electricity. |
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As my CD player lies on its deathbed, breathing its last breath, looking forward into the great white tunnel, pearly gates, etc., I wish for a LOTR-themed player instead... also it has absolutely nothing to do with pants- an added plus. Have a nice ride to the top of the list. |
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Hmm. Combine it with a cell phone(?) and you could be Lord of the Rings indeed. (?) |
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At about 17 hours, the Ring Cycle would require 140 of these rings. That's a very tall pointy hat you'd need. Croissant. |
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Hmmm... nice idea...but I have some queries...
Answer me these questions three, ere the warm pastry ye see. WHY use groove and needle when the optical or magneto-optical stuff of cd or minidisc could be used?...the ring would look pretty in the light ! WILL one of the players be consumed by greed and powerlust when it is used to spin a ring? WILL it be shock-resistant so I can go jogging with it? |
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There could be a digital ring, but it would require a violet laser which costs $2000 for the bare diode. Saruman (NOT Sarumen) will have a player that will act funny when it detects an Elvish font on the outside of the ring. The Gandalf player will keep on playing when dropped from a height of 50 feet. The Frodo player will have the ability to change the speed of the music without altering the pitch. |
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For the record: How does one pronounce Saruman and Gandalf? |
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'Sa' as in 'Sally', 'ru' as in ruthenium, 'man' as in 'man'.
'Gand' as in 'Gandhi', 'alf' as in 'malfeasance'. |
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