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Q&A Interview 9: The Roaring ’20s

If I’m looking at myself in the mirror versus weighing myself on a scale, I feel very differently about what I’m seeing. Was the same thing true once people could start to measure the intensity of sound? Did people feel differently about what they were hearing once they could measure it? [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125603013″ params=”color=ff6600″ width=”100%” […]

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Q&A Interview 8: The Roaring ’20s

You talked about how city officials tried to tackle sound complaints in the past, by inventing new technologies to hide and cover up sounds. They also passed new laws to regulate the use of sound. Did they invent any new standards of politeness or cultural mores to deal with these noise complaints?   [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125602253″ […]

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Q&A Interview 7: The Roaring ’20s

One of the striking patterns on your site was how many complaints there were about radios. Now it seems like the biggest complaint are cell phones. Why?   [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125601725″ params=”color=ff6600″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]   Yeah, that is intriguing and interesting. I think that amplified sound was still relatively new in the late 1920s. […]

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Q&A Interview 6: The Roaring ’20s

Your research contrasts the sounds of the past — street peddlers and horse-drawn carriages — with the institutional sounds of modernity: quiet office spaces and elevator Muzak. But people don’t respond to these sounds in the same way. People get angry about loud sounds on the street, but office sounds don’t seem to bother them […]

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Q&A Interview 5: The Roaring ’20s

Based on your research, was it louder then or now?   [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125602736″ params=”color=ff6600″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]   TRANSCRIPT: I don’t know the answer to that question. One could possibly pursue that because right at this time, the late 1920s, for the first time scientists have instruments to measure sound levels. At the time […]

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