Audible Ink

All last week, clutching a color insert torn from the current issue of Asahi Science Magazine (circ. 90,000), subscribers streamed into Canon Camera Co. service stations in five Japanese cities. One side of the insert bore color pictures of Niagara Falls and London's Big Ben clock tower, the other a solid block of brown ink. As the subscribers listened spellbound, the insert, placed face up in a table-top device called a Synchroreader, reproduced the awesome thunder of Niagara Falls, the clangorous toll of Big Ben.

What mesmerized Asahi Science readers--and in three days sold out an extra-run issue of 100,000--was an ingenious application, by Tokyo Institute of Technology Professor Yasushi Hoshino, of an old sound-recording technique. Niagara's roar was magnetically and invisibly etched in the insert page's brown ink, exactly as sound tracks are laid on magnetic tape.

Paper printed with the audible ink can be overprinted, creased or crumpled without affecting the sound. The process is readily adaptable to high-speed rotary presses--an asset not lost on Asahi Shimbun, the Tokyo daily of 4,000,000 circulation, which also publishes Asahi Science Magazine. The three Tokyo printing companies already equipped to print recording on paper expect mass production to reduce the present 4 1/2-c--per-page cost to 2-c- or less. Main drawback: the stay-at-home subscriber must pay $417 for equipment that will buy him the dubious privilege of hearing his magazine or newspaper roar like a waterfall or merely go bongbong.

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