(This article appears by permission of the Tenebris Corporation.)
Visitors to the recent Consumer Electronics Exposition could be forgiven for avoiding the booth featuring products of the Tenebris Corporation - it looked at first like the booth was shut down, with all the lights switched off. But many passers-by suddenly stopped and took a second look, because something did not make sense. Since the entire exposition area was bathed in bright fluorescent lights that illuminated every corner of every booth - how was it, then, that this booth alone seemed to be cloaked in a local blackout?
After a sizeable crowd had clustered around the booth, the booth manager cheerfully called out, "Sorry for the confusion folks!", and then proceeded to switch off the lamps clamped to the walls of the booth, at which point everything became clear - except for where the temporary darkness had come from, and how it had suddenly been dispelled. And at that point, the booth manager, John Seymour, who is also the co-president of Tenebris Corporation, had a perfect opening for his pitch to a steadily growing audience.
The Darkbulb collects ambient light and stores it.
Everyone's familiar with lightbulbs - electricity is sent through a tiny filament; resistance heats the filament until it begins to glow, sending light in every direction. But all it takes is to imagine for a moment playing the action in reverse - an ambient light ray returns to the filament, is absorbed, and contributes to the creation of an electric pulse. Time reversal is a common theme in science fiction, and it occasionally provides useful insights in real science. In this case, time reversal only provided the initial insight: that the world is full of light rays, and that these light rays might be harvested for the energy they contain.