Reminiscences on Laymon Miller's remarkable twenty seven year consulting career at Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge

Abstract

Laymon Miller joined the noise control engineering consulting staff of Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) on August 1, 1954, bringing an impressive record of experience in acoustics from Harvard University's top secret Underwater Sound Lab (HUSL) during WWll followed by ten years as head of the acoustics section at Penn State's Ordinance Research Lab (ORL). Laymon provided invaluable mentoring for many new BBN consulting staff members like this author whose only experience in acoustics were introductory courses in architectural acoustics taught by Physics Professor Richard Bolt at MIT's School of Architecture and the MIT Acoustics Lab, Laymon quickly established a reputation among BBN employees and clients alike as an outstanding teacher and contributed to BBN's unofficial title as the “third important graduate school in Cambridge.” He documented his diverse consulting career through numerous technical papers and articles, through technical brochures he prepared for clients like the US Army Corps of Engineers,manufactures like the Baltimore Air Coil Company and through reports he prepared for thousands of BBN projects on which he served as principal consultant. Laymon retired from BBN in 1981 after a remarkable 27 year career making quieter buildings, concert halls, workplaces, communities, transportation vehicles, and in general, “the world a better place.”