High-tech messages from the grave

Inventors usually try to come up with things that will change people's lives. But Robert Barrows is hoping to make an impact after their death. He is patenting video-equipped tombstones to let cemetery visitors watch messages from the dead.

Barrows, of Burlingame, California, has filed a patent application for a hollow headstone fitted with a flat LCD touch screen (US 2004/85337). It also houses a computer with a hard disc or microchip memory that allows the deceased to speak from the grave through a video message.

Barrows is not first to come up with an electronically enhanced tombstone. Scott Mindrum, president of Making Everlasting Memories in Cincinnati, Ohio - which hosts memorial tributes on the internet - has a patent on a gravestone that displays a collection of the deceased's photographs, alongside tributes from their friends.