🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 26 Sep 2006 23:06:00 -0500, "Mike Rieves" <mriev@hotspam.com>
wrote:

>

>>
>  I remember seeing this thing on the TV program "I've Got a Secret" in the 
>late fifties or early sixties. (I saw a rerun of that show on the Game 
>networt a couple of years ago). I remember there were arguments in the press 
>at the time as to where it was really transmitting via RF or merely audio 
>transmitted by bone conduction. As best I remember, there were well-known 
>experts on both sides of the argument.
>  Also, Lucille Ball claimed to have heard a picked up a radio broadcast on 
>a filling while passing by a station after a visit from her dentist. 
>

That Lucille Ball story has also been pretty roundly criticized, and 
there isn't a shred of documentation in support of it.  (She was
supposed to have intercepted code from a Japanese spy transmitter,
leading to the arrest of the spy.  But no records of that arrest have 
ever been found.)

I believe all the "dental radio" stories are in the "urban legend"
category.  At least, I have never been able to validate one.
It's always something we've just "heard about" (so to speak!).

There are several reasons why dental radio is unlikely, not the
least of which is that the supposed "diode" from the fillings is
without an antenna, in an enclosure made of a pretty good
conductor (saltwater, basically).  So the best you could possibly
hope for would be a few microvolts *in your tooth*.  Now, even
assuming this signal could get the nerve beneath it to fire,
and even considering that some of those nerves may leak
signals into the auditory nerve, you'd still be left with the
single-channel problem:  The best you could *possibly* hope
for would be a string of buzzes.

On the other hand, it is much more plausible that these cases
(if any real ones exist) are auditory hallucinations, possibly
stimulated by real acoustic noise from TMJ (tempro-mandibular
joint) problems, or slightly occluded blood vessels.  Or even
stimulated by tinnitus, which may or may not be acoustic but
in some people can be a broadband effect unlike the more
usual "riinging in the ears".  Broadband noise can definitely
produce "radio station" illusions under the proper conditions,
and I hope to write a paper decribing this in detail in the near
future.

Best regards,


by 




Bob Masta
dqatechATdaqartaDOTcom
 
            D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
           www.daqarta.com
Home of DaqGen, the FREEWARE signal generator