Who says you need to be on either side of the Charles River to be the home of true innovation? After all Maine has a long history of inventing things you probably thought came from somewhere else. Now the list has grown with the addition of the Slanket, the original sleeved blanket that competitor the Snuggie has so recently made famous.
Apparently Gary Clegg, a University of Maine student in 1998, found the winter nights in Orono too cold, so he came up with the idea of a blanket with sleeves and asked his mom to stitch one up. And that is just the latest in a string of Maine-born inventions that stretch all the way back to the toothpick.
Earmuffs, the power drill, the snow plow and the thermostat all got their start in Maine, as did the invention that helped drive Rhode Island-based Dunkin’ Donuts to its current heights, the donut hole machine.
The Slanket, however, is simply one example of an area where Maine continues to shine in innovation — materials sciences. Last year the Maine Composites Alliance was brought back into the public eye with the appointment of new executive director Stephen Von Vogt, the founder of several composite materials firms, including Maine Marine Composites Inc., along with new funding through the Maine Technology Institute.
As Jake Ward, assistant vice president of research, economic development and governmental relations at the University of Maine, put it in a report on the sector: “We have learned how to stick stuff together.”
Summit Global Group, PLR IP Holdings LLC, and the Impossible Project, a group that had bought a former Polaroid plant in Amsterdam with the intent to manufacture its own instant photography product, have made a deal to manufacture new Polaroid instant cameras and film in 2010.
According to the Boston Herald, PLR IP Holdings is co-owned by Boston-based financial services firm Gordon Brothers Group.
The former Route 128 powerhouse auctioned off its former headquarters in Waltham on Friday. Its assets, including its intellectual property and name, were sold in April to New York-based private equity firm Patriarch Partners.
Even as it fell, Polaroid’s instant photography technology had fans — organized, proactive fans that started projects like Poladroid, a web site that gives digital photos that slightly off Polaroid color; Polanoid, an online gallery of the world’s scanned Polaroid photos; the unnecessary-to-explain Save Polaroid; and the Impossible Project, which had been buying capital to manufacture a similar product. So bringing the product back isn’t that shocking given that some people were bent out of shape enough to buy a factory.
Click the medals, and then the questions on the multimedia feature above to hear audio of the winners.
I dropped by Harvard last night before the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — a Nobel Prize takeoff that honors research that makes people laugh, then think. Most of the ten prizewinners were assembled in the Sanders Theater prior to the show, which I was told would include a “Bernie Madoff-themed cabaret” — it’s not on YouTube yet, but you’ll be the first to know when it is. The show also featured a performance from the Boston Squeezebox Ensemble, and I cannot begin to imagine what that could possibly be.
Among the winners, Javier Morales and Miguel Apátiga, researchers at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, were honored for developing a process that makes diamond from tequila. Apátiga said one experiment used 25 million liters of booze.
Donald Unger cracked the knuckles of his left hand for more than 60 years to test his mother’s theory on arthritis, and picked up the Ig Nobel medicine prize for his efforts. Winning the award amazed him — Unger said he’s done great work in his time, but this wasn’t it. (more…)
If I only had a nickel for every time I typed that headline … Vladimir Bulovic, of MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics, hooked a pickle up to what looks like a rotisserie spit, and got it to glow like an OLED pixel.
As Bulovic explains, OLED displays are 100-molecule-thick thin films hooked up to electrodes at the top and the bottom.
“The only thing you need to do next, is make sure you have a million individual little devices side by side.”
The gauntlet has been thrown — who among you will build the million pickle TV? MassTLC’s unConference is Thursday — let’s get this thing going as the next X Prize.
Mashable catches up with Emo Labs, the Waltham-based company making invisible speaker technology for flat screen TVs that, detailed explanations aside, makes no sense beyond “sound comes out of the screen.”
The company was a hit at the recent DEMOfall09 emerging tech conference in San Diego. After the jump, watch Carlson demonstrate his technology with the bizarre choice of the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo.”
The Financial Times Tech Blog — which sounds like, but is not, the Mass High Tech Blog’s salmon-colored, English cousin — talks to Sriram Peruvemba, VP of marketing at electronic display-maker E Ink about the evolving market for its technology. The Cambridge-based company, which was bought earlier this year, makes the displays for the Amazon Kindle and most of the 40-plus other models of electronic book reader, according to the Financial Times.
Peruvemba told the Financial Times he saw e-reader prices eventually dropping to $99, and:
Colour is coming next year, with E Ink laying a colour filter over its monochrome display. While the company, which is currently being acquired by Taiwan’s Prime View International, owns the market at present, Mr Peruvemba said 20 companies were currently trying to enter the e-paper sector with differing technologies.
The Globe talks to startup machine Robert Langer and fellow MIT researcher Angela Belcher as part of a look at the somewhat underwhelming creep of nanotechnology into everyday products like pants and sunscreen. We may not have cancer fighting robots in our bloodstream yet, but:
But analysts and scientists say extraordinary new devices and techniques are not far off, especially in the realms of medical treatment, power sources, and consumer electronics. Picture cellphones so thin and flexible they can be worn as neck scarves. Imagine assembly lines “staffed’’ by viruses. Think of concrete produced with just a fraction of today’s pollutants (concrete production is a major emitter of greenhouse gases), but able to endure for thousands of years.
So long as newspapers can’t be staffed by viruses, I approve.
MHT talked to Belcher about her flexible virus battery technology in May. Langer has also been known to turn up from time to time.
Everybody look up and wave: Raytheon has announced it has an infrared sensor that can keep its 16 megapixel eye trained on an entire hemisphere.
The press release, which says it could be used for a space-based missile warning system, or for meteorology or astronomy applications, makes it sound kind of creepy:
… “When employed as part of a satellite sensor system, the 4K-by-4K will permit full-Earth hemisphere staring with a single focal plane array.”
Raytheon said sensors using the technology would be simpler, since they wouldn’t need scanning mechanisms needed to cover an entire hemisphere.
Staff writer Jackie Noblett dropped by New England Business Day to talk about using pavement as an energy source. Researchers at UMass Amherst and WPI, along with Acton-based materials company Novotech, are developing technology that could take heat captured by asphalt and use it to generate hot water or steam, which could in turn be used to generate power.
The technology could also help cool cities down, which would be nice to have later on this afternoon.
By Rodney Brown
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