Tribute to Kenneth McKechnie Eldred

Abstract

I first met Ken while at the Boeing Co and he was Vice President at the Western Electro-Acoustics Laboratory in Los Angeles. I met him again at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, where he was Chief of Physical Acoustics under Henning von Gierke. He recruited me to come to Huntsville, Alabama, to join the new branch of Wyle that Marshall Space Flight Center wanted for rocket noise programs supporting NASA's rocket noise programs. To augment this Wyle staff, Ken recruited several outstanding acoustical scientists from Southampton University in the UK, including the late Martin Lowson. More on this in Richard Potter's paper. Ken's Wyle staff worked with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Boeing Co. and Lockheed Aircraft in pursuing the environmentally failed development of the SST. Ken supported the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC) and guided Wyle in their preparation of key documents on Noise Policy. He left Wyle to join Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) and later left BBN to form Ken Eldred Engineering. He was a Fellow of ASA, received the ASA Silver Medal in Noise in 1994, and was active on ASA Standards committees, the National Research Council, the Society of Automotive Engineers, and the National Academy of Sciences. The other speakers will discuss other aspects of Ken's many contributions, including those for the Institute of Noise Control Engineering (INCE).