Apart from stopping bullets, what can Kevlar do?

We know Kevlar is used in body armour. We have seen too many heroes riddled with bullets and thankfully, they wore Kevlar (by DuPont) and lived to fight another day.

I just got this pair of amazing British-designed Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) 685 speakers and they are sitting prettily in my office. While I am writing this and doing my year-end closing and corporate exercise (it is 11pm now on a Friday night and yes, entrepreneurs works long hours), the speakers are playing Pet Shop Boys, my all time favourite Euro-techno band.

If you look at the yellow cone, audiophile calls it "cone bass/midrange" and I suspect it means the normal range of frequency -not so high (that's for the tweeters) and not so low (that's for the bass flowport), it is made of Kevlar.

Since Kevlar is a high tech synthetic fabric that possesses high tensile strength, it is perfect for making the vibrating part of the speaker's cone. Dont ask me about the science but intuitively it makes sense.

Check out Wikipedia on Kevlar and i was surprised to learn it was invented as early as 1965. It is used in so many applications - body anti-ballistic armour, ropes, car brakes, buildng material, optic fibre cables, sports equipment and drum heads. Yes, drum heads.

I don't need a body armour (yet) but it is nice to have two pieces of Kelvar blasting the sweetest music I have ever heard on my B&W. As they always say in those science programmes, what will they think of next?

After Pet Shop Boys, I will play Susan Wong (queen of Super Audio CD recording with her perfect vocal), Tsai Chin (she sang the memorable song in the movie Infernal Affairs - both Andy Lau and Tony Leung were staring at the vacuum tube amplifier), Diana Krall and a chamber group playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Kevlar makes my long lonely nights in the office fun.

Harold Fock

The amazing B&W 685. The robot is not part of the speaker but a gift from my daughter Natalie