The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 - Softcover

Thompson, Emily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262701065 ISBN 13: 9780262701068

Publisher: MIT Press, 2004

Synopsis

A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America.

In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era.

Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston's Symphony Hall, New York's office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound―clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant―had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"A good book opens your eyes; this one opens your ears as well."
--Stuart W. Leslie, Department of the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, The Johns Hopkins University

"This book takes on entirely new territory in the still-emerging scholarship on our aural history and does so with panache and clarity. It is an exemplar of how the history of technology and culture should be done."
--Susan J. Douglas, The University of Michigan

About the Author:

Emily Thompson is a Professor of History at Princeton University.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0262701065
• ISBN 13: 9780262701068
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 510