A WEIRD ROOM

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 50, 28 August 1934, Page 5

A WEIRD ROOM

FIGHT WITH NOISE

BRITISH INVESTIGATION

licucntly I found myself in the weirdest room in London—a room which suggested at once some grotesque escapade on the part of a demented builder. For its walls slanted away from one another, and its coiling, instead of being level, was on an incline, says a writer in the "Daily Telegraph."

Moreover, this room, 'although ostensibly ii part of the surrounding building, was actually isolated all around, and on the top and bottom, by an air space. The only supports were concrete piers, on tho top of which were slabs of cork that acted like cushions. My speculations as to the steps which would be necessary if the cork had to bo renewed were cut short by an explanation that seemed thoroughly in keeping: "We simply raise the room hydraulically and then insert fresh cork!" The whole scheme appeared fantastic enough to represent a blend of Alice in Wonderland and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and yet tho explauatiou proved a simple one. This room was built for the purpose of carrying out experiments at the National Physical Laboratory. Scientists there arc anxious to track down the noises from which the householder suffers today—the gramophone next door, the neighbouring baby, the morning milkman, the woman singer in the next flat, the pianist across the way, and all tho other disturbers of the peace. Only by constructing a room on such an irregular plan is it possible to got noise effects at their worst. Having clone this, with the object of standardising them, the experimenters look for a remedy. Two other rooms, built on somewhat similar lines, are separated from one another by a wall which is being constantly altered. Various materials are used in order to discover which have the best sound-resisting qualities. THIS NOISY WORLD. "Never has tho world suffered so much from noise as today," said an expert who was explaining new developments at tho General Board's annual inspection of the laboratory. "In homes of the Victorian period the habit of using curtains and heavy upholstery led to noise being absorbed much more than in modern homes, where tho demand is for polished floors, hard uncovered walls, and severe effects in furnishing. "This, with the thin partitions, undoubtedly helps to swell the amount of noise. Rooms are coated with plaste* which is as good a reflector of sound as a mirror is of light.". Anti-noise experiments, however, are merely one of the hundreds of wonders at Teddington. In the radio department 1 saw a scientist testing soil. It had been brought to him in order that he might ascertain in tho laboratory whether tho ground from which it came is suitable as the site of a wireless transmitting station. Tho conductivity of the ground is an important factor in regard to a transmitting station. Sand apparently gives the poorest results, and a soil impregnated with salt the best. It used to be the practice to survey the ground; now samples of the soil are sent to Teddington and, in some cases, bottles of water. OTHER WONDERS;, Here are some of the other things to bo seen at the laboratory. Apparatus of the first importance, which now enables medical men to give doses of X-rays measured as carefully as the drugs in a bottle of medicine. An instrument in which, by the use of a photo-electric cell instead of the human eye, colours and their many shades can be graded accurately instead of by guusswork. A device by which the standard yard can be measured in terms of a wave of light without'the error being greater than one-millionth of an inch, thus overcoming tho danger of material standards growing or contracting slightly with time. Another instrument which gives a captain warning by means of light flashes that a vessel approaching in tho fog will collide with his ship unless course is .-• altered. The exact direction in which the neighbouring ship is travelling is shown at any distance up to ten miles. Yet another device which I saw ensures such accuracy in weight that a pound can bo weighed accurately to within l-30,000th of a grain. Tho mechanism is so delicate that it is affected even by the heat of the observer's body.