PEACE AND SILENCE

Evening Post, Issue 56, 7 March 1934, Page 8

PEACE AND SILENCE

DISCORDANT CITY NOISES -SYNCHRONISED SOUNDS The world is trying to recapture its old place; it is also trying to recapture its old silence. The latter is a mechanical problem; the former a moral •onej and much niore difficult. But even in-tho mechanical Tegion of avoidable noises in cities, the path of anti-noiso leagues is by no means clear. There are many offenders, and the British Anti-Noise League is accused of treating some more critically than others. This is what an apologist for the harmless,. necessary motor-car says:—' "It seems just a little unfair of the honorary secretary of the Anti-Noise League to blame only the motor vehicle, without referring to the wonderful advances made in silencing these vehicles of recent years. Everyone who is at all conversant with the development of this most convenient and essential form of transport knows that it is, broadly speaking, impossible to sell a car today that is noisy. The car-buying public demands silence and is getting it to a far greater degree than ever'before. The elimination of mechanical noise is strikingly indicated by the fact that designers are now devoting their attentiou to silencing the mild hiss of the induction system which;/,in the: absence of other hoises,Acan now be'detected. " The league's .indictment of the motor.horn ia equally open to criticism, now that nearly all Anew cars havo. the pleasing high-frequency horn note. ' . .- ;..'- . . .. "The, suggestion that heavy-vehicle traffic is unnecessary and can be carried by the railways; coupled with the absence'of any complaint against railway noises—shrieking whistles, shunting the night long, arid general roar and rattle—points to AaritipathiesA other than thoso concerned merely.with sound. Instead of roundly condemning an essential service which has shown such rapid improvement, the Anti-Noise League might devote some attention to the old-established and unabated noises on the one hand, and tho newer varieties that now disturb our quiet, on the other. In tho first class wo have railways with their'shunting operations, trams', and church bells disturbing wide areas. .In the second "class there is most" notably the 'full-blast non-stop wireless loudspeaker. The unavoidable unremitting noise^f rom a fixed location is more distressing than the transitory sound of traffic, and the Anti-Noise League might possibly work more- usefully in the golden cause of silence if its ears were less .exclusively motorconscious." The'pbet's dream of "that lovely city, Carcassonne," dates long before the motor age, and has not been brought nearer by modern progress. But an, idea was conveyed' in a picture recently shown in Wellington, which presented a luxury liner with machinery all sounding to a definite rhythm—the engines supplying the base sounds, the hooters and horns tho high notes, and a number of other utility sounds blending in the chorus. .. But is sound-synchron-ised machinery effective for production? So far it has only been done "in tho pictures'."