The Telegraph? Both the British Royal Navy and the Emperor of Russia were involved in the earliest, practicable designs. The radio? Same deal: it transmitted messages to soldiers without the need of telegraph lines. The compressor? Originally, it was used to ensure no radio orders to troops would be inaudible. The Big Bang is proven.Fun fact: you can generally assume that your favorite piece of audio technology was invented for the purposes of the military, communications, or communications for the military. ![]() Their discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation won them the Nobel Prize because the remnant heat showed that the universe must have begun with a violent explosion. They eventually realized that the noise was the sound of the universe itself, a remnant of a dense, hot plasma that pervaded the early cosmos.Ģ0. Back in the ’60s, Bell Labs astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson kept picking up static with their radio telescope. Noise can be the nemesis of any signal.ġ9. To carry the same amount of information in a noisier environment, the whale songs have become more repetitive. The disorienting sound drives beaked whales to beach themselves, and it makes humpbacks extend the length of their songs by 29 percent.ġ8. And then there’s the unintended assault on ocean dwellers by noisy navy sonar. The stress causes some 45,000 fatal heart attacks a year in the developing world, according to researcher Dieter Schwela of the Stockholm Environment Institute.ġ7. ![]() Deafness isn’t the only medical danger of noise exposure. Preventing it would require that cities become 10 dB quieter.ġ6. Social and ambient noise causes hearing loss, often misdiagnosed as an effect of aging. According to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, the volume of an animated conversation between Americans increased by 10 dB during the ’90s.ġ5. Researchers at the Université de Bretagne-Sud have found that men imbibe more than 20 percent faster when ambient noise is cranked up from 72 to 88 dB.ġ4. The principle is now used in noise-canceling headsets.ġ3. The first patent on “active noise cancellation” dates to 1933, when German physicist Paul Lueg proposed to silence sound waves by simultaneously generating waves of the exact opposite orientation. ![]() No wonder unprotected boilermaking was a problem: The human ear can perceive sound waves that move the eardrum less than the width of an atom.ġ2. One of Barr’s solutions to the problem of “boilermaker’s ear” was to suggest that clergymen shave their beards so that workmen could lip-read their sermons.ġ1. After he tested the hearing of 100 boilermakers, he determined that incessant pounding of hammers against metal boilers caused severe hearing loss.ġ0. The first scientific study was initiated in 1886 by Glasgow surgeon Thomas Barr. Recognizing noise exposure as an occupational safety hazard took longer. ![]() Tinsmiths and roosters were required to live outside the town limits.ĩ. The first known noise ordinance was passed by the Greek province of Sybaris in the sixth century B.C. The effects are dubbed the “railway bonus” and “aircraft malus.”Ĩ. The only difference is that people find plane noises more annoying. Since the decibel scale is logarithmic, growing exponentially, that means a jet sounds twice as loud as a train when the noise levels of both vehicles are objectively the same.ħ. According to psychoacoustician Hugo Fastl, people perceive airplane noise as if it were 10 dB greater than the equivalent noise made by a train.Ħ. That’s how loud a jet engine would sound - if it were a foot away from your ear.ĥ. They pack their cars with stereo amps to pump out 180-plus decibels (dB) of noise at so-called dB drag races. There are people who would outdo it if they could.
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