TOO MUCH NOISE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6631, 9 June 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

TOO MUCH NOISE

PROTESTS IN MELBOURNE. DEMONSTRATIONS BY RADIO.» SYDNEY, May 24. Melbourne has a Collins Street of which it is very proud, so proud, in fact that it resents the proposal to lay down a tram track there. Melbourne has few diversions nowadays, following on the removal of the capital to Canberra, and has entered wholeheartedly into the campaign of the Noise Abatement League. Every other day it has a protest meeting of some sort or another and the crusade is sponsored to some purpose by the Melbourne Herald, which devotes at least a column a day in the interests of less noise. The extraordinary statements which have been made are almost enough to convince the people of Melbourne that they live in an atmosphere which is shattering their nerves and shortening their lives. Doctors and professors are assisting to prove how noisy Melbourne really is; in fact, the noise of the protests is almost as great as the noises that those protesting would remedy. In case people did not believe the assertions of those in a position to tell them how great the noises in the city really were, a broadcast of city noise when traffic was at its peak was arranged last week. This broadcast was a wonderful success and the leaders of the anti-noise society are more than gratified. Special apparatus was used and the experiment was under the control of Professor Laby. Collecting Every Whisper. Professor Laby duly .arrived at Cathedral Corner, armed with a super-sen-sitive microphone. The paper named explained that this instrument did not increase the volume of sounds, but it collected every whisper and transmitted it to the studio, where the sounds were amplified and then put on the air. The degree of intensity of the broadcast was no greater than that which entered the microphone. The apparatus was erected at the top pf the cathedral steps. It was found

impracticable to place it on the street level, where the noise was loudest. As it was, th.c sound of the electric trams, of cars, of horses’ hoofs and the chatter of the hurrying throng were so loud as entirely to drown the voice of the broadcaster at a distance of 2ft. from the microphone. The microphone was raised 10ft. above the street level. A few feet away the swelling music of the cathedral organ was booming, yet not a single note could penetrate the street din. Listeners, it is said, were amazed at the volume of noise to which they had become ace. tomed in their daily comings and goings. In the quiet of their homos its concentrated effect was terrible. “Sensations of a Maniac.” Interviewed after the test, the chairman of the Noise Abatemeit League, Dr Ostermeycr, said: “I have been a crusader against noise, but I had no conception of what th o noises of the city really were until I heard them broadcast, with one sense only alert for them. I now understand for the first time what the sensations of a maniac must bo with the world crashing and resounding in his ears in a wild and meaningless jumble. ‘Nothing could more graphically have illustrated the awful experience the sick and delirious must feel in a darkened sick room, when the world without has come to mean to them just a horrible and diabolical concatenation of menacing noises. In one hospital alone 800 of our sick are' within hearing of those terrible trams, and we have been supine until now in our revolt against the iniquity.”