POLLUTION, NOISE
And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: And there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
—Rev. 8:5
4446 The Decibel
Since 1950 the noise level in the United States alone has doubled every ten years.
A decibel is an arbitrary unit based on the faintest sound that a man can hear. The scale is logarithmic, so that an increase of 10 db means a tenfold increase in sound intensity; a 20-db rise a hundredfold increase, and 30 db a thousandfold increase.
4447 Some Decibel Ratings
The rustle of leaves has a decibel rating of 20. Conversational speech a decibel rating of 60. Now at the decibel range of 85 if it is prolonged, hearing damage can occur. A jet airliner 500 ft. overhead has a decibel rating of 115. And coincidentally, rock music with amplifiers is rated at 120 decibels which is also the noise level of human pain threshold.
4448 No. 1 Japanese concern: Noise
Despite Japan’s tolerance of its annual quota of 30 typhoons, smog, recessions and congestions, there is one thing they cannot stand: noise. Rated among the top three major public concerns, noise pollution has sparked several court suits, shutdowns of various noisy factories and airports. Cause: headaches, frayed nerves and insomnia for nearly half the population.
4449 Birds Scream Like Women In Pain
Ista, Calif. (UPI)—Richard Ferguson’s peacocks “screamed like a woman in pain,” his roosters crowed endlessly and the combined racket outside his neighbor’s bedroom forced her into the living room before she could sleep.
“They made noise all the time,” Mrs. Eleanor Suedmeyer complained to a municipal court jury. “The peacocks screamed like a woman in pain and a good night’s sleep was impossible.”
Ferguson is charged with disturbing the peace with his birds, but contends his home is in a rural zone in which residents are permitted to keep fowls, horses and other animals.
“If the case goes against me, I’ll go to jail,” said Ferguson, who faces a 500 U. S. dollar fine and six months in jail. “I will not pay the fine.”
4450 Pentecostal Building To Be Soundproofed
During a week of “revival” meetings at the seventy-five-member Southwest United Pentecostal Church in the Houston suburb of Missouri City, two policemen entered the church and asked the congregation to be quieter. They said the church’s next-door neighbor, Wayne Cousins, was complaining about loud noise. Legal charges would be filed, they warned, if the singing, shouting, and instrumental music were not muted somewhat.
The warning apparently went unheeded. A complaint was filed the next day, a jury of six found the congregation guilty of disorderly conduct, and Municipal Judge Richard A. Mayhan levied a $50 fine. Pastor Edward A. Fruge, claiming the meeting was “a regular Pentecostal service,” says the church will appeal. A new soundproof building will be constructed later this year, he adds.
—Christianity Today
4451 IRS And Electronic Smog
The Internal Revenue Service opened a new computer complex in Louisiana; part of the brain’s memory suddenly went blank. Puzzled IRS officials eventually learned why. The center had been built under a flight path to the New Orleans airport, and radar signals from the field had erased tax records that had been freshly stored on the computer’s magnetic tape.
In the middle of the night, electrically-controlled garage doors in a number of Western states suddenly begin to open and close. At Houston Manned Spacecraft Center, an outburst of strange signals starts disrupting communications with an orbiting Gemini spaceship. High above the Gulf of Mexico, the navigational gear of a jetliner bound for Miami mysteriously indicates that the plane is on a course for Cuba.
One major cause of the electromagnetic smog is the increasingly intensive competition for the use of available radio frequencies. In 1949, there were 160,000 radio transmitters of all kinds operating in the U. S. Now there are more than 6,000,000, and the number will doubtless continue to rise. In the not-too-distant future, the entire world may become what RCA President Robert W. Sarnoff recently described as a huge “electronic, whispering gallery.”
As ever larger numbers of electronic gadgets come into use, they increasingly crowd the atmosphere—and space above—with an invisible pollutant: stray, mischief-making radio waves.
The source of such electromagnetic interference may be almost any piece of electrical equipment: fluorescent lights, the ignition system of a car, or even a seemingly innocuous transistor radio. And with so many sources, the interference is becoming more and more exasperating.
—Selected
4452 Anti-Noise Plan For Jetliners
Secretary of Transportation William Coleman revealed a program to force jetliners to reduce noise by 30 percent, saying that their present noise was an unacceptable intrusion in the lives of some 6 million Americans.
The cost of carrying out the program, through modifying or replacing existing planes, is estimated at nearly $8 billion. Virtually all of the 2,000 planes in the U. S. commercial fleet would be affected.
4453 British Bishop Against Concorde
One of the most eloquent witnesses at the U. S. government hearing on the Supersonic Concorde airliner was British bishop Hugh Montifore of Kingstonupon, Thames. The bishop, who lives near London’s Heathrow airport (where the Concorde has landed frequently), advised American transportation officials not to grant landing fights to the Concorde.
“Concorde’s noise,” he said, “can be unbearable, above the threshold of pain … It is not hell, because hell goes on forever. It is more like a secular form of pergatory.” He expressed hope that the U. S. would ban the Concorde out of a “sense of obligation to your oldest allies.”
—Selected
4454 Most Powerful Sound System
The world’s most powerful sound system is that installed at the Ontario Motor Speedway, California. It has an output of 30,800 watts connectable to 355 home-speaker assemblies and thus able to communicate the spoken word to 230,000 people above the noise of 50 screaming racing cars.
4455 New Weapon: “Smart Noise”
Once it was sufficient to jam an enemy’s radar with a blanket of “noise.” Now, that is no longer enough. The goal now is “smart noise”—jamming equipment sophisticated enough to find and jam a specific frequency and to follow the enemy radar as it jumps from one frequency to another.
4456 Fiddling The Bridge
When the first iron bridge was built in Colebrook Dale, England, it is said a fiddler came along and threatened to “fiddle the bridge down.” The workmen laughingly bade him “fiddle away.”
He tried note after note on his instrument until he hit upon one that coincided with the structure’s vibratory movement, and as he sounded that note with prolonged effort, the structure began to quiver so perceptibly, that the workmen begged him to stop lest the half-completed bridge should fall.
4457 Every City Has A Voice
High above a city, the medley of street noises is blended into one overall note, sound, or murmur. For instance, we are told that the overall note of Chicago is bass; of London it is baritone; and that of New York is tenor.
4458 Foot Tapping Distracts Conductor
One day when Hans Richter was conducting at a concert, a man in the front row of the audience persisted in tapping his foot. The conductor endured this for some little time and then turned to the audience and fixed the offender with a steely eye.
“I am sorry to trouble you,” said Richter icily, “but I cannot always keep time with your foot.”
4459 Praying As Unusual Noise?
An officer once complained to General Stonewall Jackson that some soldiers were making a noise in their tent. “What are they doing?” asked the General. “They are praying now, but they have been singing,” was the reply. “And is that a crime?” the General demanded. “The articles of war orders punishment for an unusual noise,” was the reply. “God forbid that praying should be an unusual noise in the camp,” replied General Jackson.
—Wesleyan Methodist
4460 Epigram On Pollution (Noise)
• The young man who kept moving about in the rear of the courtroom, lifting chairs and looking under desks, finally caused a frown to cloud the judge’s face. Looking up and at the disturber, Judge Elbert Henry Gary of Chicago, later head of the United States Steel Corporation, called out, “Young man, you are making a great deal of unnecessary noise. What are you about?”
“Your honor,” replied the young man, “I have lost my overcoat, and am trying to find it.”
“Well,” mused the venerable jurist, “people often lose whole suits in here without making all that disturbance.”
See also: Music, Modern ; Silence ; Talking.