Thought this was interesting.
A friend of mine emailed me this news clip about American Signal. Didn’t notice anything off at first, shiny new sirens, nice manufacturing plant they have there.
Then we get to the anechoic chamber... and here’s where things get... well... interesting if you ask me.
If you don’t notice it at first I don’t know what to say, but here’s what I noticed:
At 2:01 in the video, in the sound chamber, you can see two i-Forces...okay, this is normal. Then the camera pans over and my mouth falls open...because I see in ASC’s factory none other than a Federal Signal Modulator!
Couple Questions Here:
A. Is it normal for competitors to do this??
B. Would this violate any legal implications (i.e. patent infringement, etc.)
C. Anyone know why ASC would want to study competition sirens? Are they trying to correct what they deem design faults and not do the same on their sirens (the I-Force)? This seems plausible to me but also seems like it’d make for some legal implications either way.
Just wanted to get some input on this. By no means am I trying to get ASC in trouble or anything, they are in this business too and I can certainly understand from a business perspective (my father was an engineer for a biomedical company for many years and they’d often study competitors’ hip implants and things to modify their own) why they’d do this but it certainly was still pretty odd to say the least.
Just an observation.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w56P-nGBj-0