MIT Leeb fluorescent light loudspeaker patent

MIT EECS professor Steven Leeb patented use of fluorescent lighting fixtures as building-wide loudspeakers for emergency announcements, exploiting the same arc-modulation physics by which a 20-kW transistorized arc supply in Tom's lab could be talked through. A European company sells $10,000 GTA-based audiophile speakers exploiting the same effect (with Tom's "you can sell anything to a music aficionado" aside on monster cables).

Professor Leeb in electrical engineering a few years ago patented a process where you could use fluorescent light technology as a loudspeaker throughout a building for safety issues. Because it's an electric arc going at high frequencies, and if you modulate it with a loudspeaker, you can speak over the fluorescent light. You can speak over a welding arc if you want. There's a German or Swiss company that will sell you a set of ten-thousand-dollar speakers that are nothing more than an electric arc, a gas tungsten arc, that has very good high frequency response, because these arcs will respond out to 100 kilohertz.