Noise Abatement Exhibition at the Science Museum

Abstract

ON May 31, the Prime Minister opened the Noise Abatement Exhibition which has been organised by the Anti-Noise League and is being held at the Science Museum, South Kensington, during this month. The opening ceremony was held in the lecture theatre, and was attended by some two hundred guests. The chair was taken by Lord Horder, chairman of the Council of the Anti-Noise League. Mr. MacDonald in his speech opening the exhibition said that formerly a person who confessed that he was troubled by noise was put down as an irreparable crank; but now it is rightly regarded that noise is something that ought not to be tolerated by any decent man or woman. He suggested that their campaign against nerve jarring should be regarded as a great movement in sestheticism. It is the duty of all to co-ordinate in the protection of life from jars of the eye and the nerves—jars of the complete human personality. Sir Henry Richards, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Anti-Noise League, in moving a vote of thanks to the Prime Minister, said that the League is an educational body and the exhibition is intended to show to the public the means of escape from noise. The Prime Minister made a short tour of the exhibition and inspected among other things a silenced pneumatic road-drill, a silenced motor-cycle engine, a ripple tank illustrating the behaviour of sound-waves from a speaker in the House of Commons and several models demonstrating the scientific principles of the reduction of noise from machinery and in buildings.