soulxtc
August 28th, 2006, 07:38 AM
The Italian town of Prato has been built on cloth.
There is even a museum there dedicated to its history, so there is no better place to weave together traditional Italian know-how with digital technology and come up with the next generation of cloth, what they are calling "smart fabric".
A company called Luminex has hit on the idea of weaving fibre-optics into fabric, so the wearer can really light up a room when they enter it.
Luminex's Cristiano Peruzzi says: "It is a fabric containing, amongst other things, fibre-optics, but there is also a technical side to it.
"The system consists of cabling, and the fibre-optics are lit by high-efficiency LEDs. The system powering it varies according to the function."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/5286594.stm
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42016000/jpg/_42016622_smart_fabrics203.jpg
http://i.n.com.com/i/ne/p/2006-2/828lluma366x550.jpg
There is even a museum there dedicated to its history, so there is no better place to weave together traditional Italian know-how with digital technology and come up with the next generation of cloth, what they are calling "smart fabric".
A company called Luminex has hit on the idea of weaving fibre-optics into fabric, so the wearer can really light up a room when they enter it.
Luminex's Cristiano Peruzzi says: "It is a fabric containing, amongst other things, fibre-optics, but there is also a technical side to it.
"The system consists of cabling, and the fibre-optics are lit by high-efficiency LEDs. The system powering it varies according to the function."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/5286594.stm
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42016000/jpg/_42016622_smart_fabrics203.jpg
http://i.n.com.com/i/ne/p/2006-2/828lluma366x550.jpg