A nonlinear Schrödinger equation in one-dimensional bead chain is first obtained and an envelope solitary wave of the system is verified numerically in this system. The reflection and the transmission of an incident envelope solitary wave due to impurities has also been investigated. It is found that the magnitudes of both the reflection and the transmission not only depend on the characters of impurity materials, the wave number, the incident wave amplitude, but also on the impurity number. This can be used to detect the character and the number of the impurity materials in the bead chain by measuring the reflection and the transmission of an incident pulse.