History of American acoustics—Introductory comments

Abstract

The history of acoustics has been illuminated by the efforts in recent years of R. Bruce Lindsay, and so this Bicentennial Session is being held in his honor. In addition, certain numerological factors spurred our efforts in this Bicentennial Year 1976. It was just one hundred years ago that A. G. Bell's invention—the first practical telephone—was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. A year later, in 1877, the first edition of Rayleigh's Theory of Sound appeared. The conjunction of these two events eventually had a powerful influence on the development of acoustics. The invited speakers will, in the papers which follow, endeavor to describe all of the significant advances made by Americans to technical acoustics. Apparently it all began with Joseph Henry's efforts to solve a problem in auditorium acoustics. At the brink of World War II, acoustics was invaded by a host of scientists and engineers. During the period 1941–45, and in the post war years, frontiers were breached in almost every direction at such a rate that description of the advances made cannot be done here. And so most of our speakers will bring their histories up only to about the year 1940.