Telephone Bell Research Articles

The Men Behind the Stars: Hollywood's Big Uncles

The Men Behind the StarsHollywood's Big Uncles Alfred Hitchcock The film agent stretches out an arm and flicks the switch of his desk phone. Without leaning forward he says to the microphone, "Get Joe at Gigantic." "Okay, Mr. Burnberg," replies the cracked voice of the secretary from the loud-speaker of the instrument, and almost before the agent can move the cigar to the other side of his mouth the telephone bell on the other side of his desk rings. Without any preliminary, even without identifying himself, he says, "Joe, how many days more do you want Su Scarlett? I must have her for Colossal." [End Page 82] The answer is apparently satisfactory, for the agent rings off with a laconic, "Oke." While one hand replaces the receiver the other flicks the desk phone again. "Get Sam at Colossal." . . . "Okay, Mr. Burnberg." Ting-a-ling! "Sam, it's all set about Su for Flaming Lips. I'll deliver her on Tuesday week. Oke." Film agents always "deliver" their clients. That is why they are called "flesh-peddlers." To the uninitiated it sounds rather like a farmer promising the butcher to send over half an ox. I was told of one agent who is in a big way of business because "he owns a piece of Clark Gable," meaning that he shares the star with other agents. They call them "Ten-percenters" as well. For supposing that Su Scarlett is in the £500 a week class and that her film for Colossal will need her services for three weeks. Mr. Burnberg will have made himself £150 by those two telephone calls. He takes ten percent of what his clients earn. They Take 10 Percent The development of the agent system in Hollywood was the thing that impressed me more than anything else. I was making a deal myself and so saw a lot of the workings of the agent organization. It was part of the system that I only took part in the proceedings when it was absolutely necessary. Indeed on an occasion when I was discussing my deal to make the film Titanic for David O. Selznick with Mr. Selznick himself, he told me frankly that it embarrassed him to have to talk money details with me direct. The stars seldom talk business with their bosses; they go to their mentors, confidantes, guides—their agents. These Big Uncles, who often act as though their clients were children, "iron out" all problems, "fix" jobs and act as nurse, valet, secretary and helper in general to their stars. Ten percent of the large salaries of film stars may sound a lot for fixing a business deal, but an agent is usually worth it; and the expenses of his elaborate organization are heavy. [End Page 83] Quite apart from the fact that artists of all kinds are generally bad business people, the stars get their full value from their agents. Agents get the star's money and look after it; they pay all bills; they buy anything from a railway ticket to a house or a car; if the poodle needs a shampoo the agent will send a man round to collect the dog; the star decides on a "European" holiday and the agent plans an itinerary, arranges suitable interviews in London and on the Continent, gets the tickets and sees the star safely on the plane for New York: he may even fly with her to the east coast of America. Even Love Affairs! To the agent the star goes with her love affairs, with her complaint if she does not like her present director or is dissatisfied with her part. I have no doubt that when Myrna Loy was fed up with being restricted to "oriental" roles, she took her problem to her agent at that time, just as William Powell must have talked over his repeated "villain" parts with his agent. And I have no doubt that the agents "ironed out" the problems. The agent also deals in directors, writers, photographers and all major employees of the studio. He buys stories and so, altogether, is in the position of universal provider for the producers. In every respect except...

Introduction

Introduction

The Teaching of Reference in American Library Schools

MISS HARRIS has admirably set forth the present state of reference service and the needs and shortcomings in present-day training of reference librarians. Her moving account of the increasing amount of telephone reference service moves me to assure her that take the matter of For Whom the Telephone Bell Rings almost as seriously as the matter of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Also, for the record, am not scared of automation, am grateful for it. For one thing, what would we do without the telephone?Now propose to present a much more superficial view of what we are teaching in the 32 American Library Association accredited graduate library schools, trying to answer three questions:1. Who is teaching reference?2. What is being taught?3. How is it being taught?Numbers, not names, must suffice for the answer to Who. Some of us have been around a long time. had a fire in my house last fall and all sorts of things boiled up, including a letter from Louis Shores, written in the mid-thirties, in which he said, I try to teach a few titles well. In the same batch of disarranged papers found an old freshman theme of mine on the evils of girls' smoking, piously written in a round, childish hand, with nary a footnote. If had researched the subject back there in 1924, might not have concluded so positively that these girls always wound up in a house of ill fame. Times have changed.Now share Wallace J. Bonk's belief that and calm discussion, coupled with patient effort and a determination to produce the bes~ possible kind of reference and bibliography course, would -result in something more professionally desirable than this present state of affairs. 1But who are these people who will gather for sensible and calm discussion? Who are teaching these reference courses?That meeting in Cleveland in April, 1962, sponsored by the Library Services Branch of the U.S. Office of Education and Western Reserve University to consider the future of library education got me all stirred up. Having read the two issues of Library Trends on the Future of Library Service: Demographic Aspects and Implications, 2 stuffed to the gills with figures on people, their geographic distribution, their doomed cities, their Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, their age structure, their baby boom, the attending librarians and library school representatives considered the types of competence required to fill the library's changed or changing role. With these in mind, they turned to types and levels of library school faculties, to admission requirements, to the curriculum, teaching methods, interdisciplinary instruction, and research.The great value of the meeting was not so much the original thinking which came out of it, but the opportunity to say out loud to one another what had been said before by other voices in other rooms. For no one expects brilliant, original thinking to take place at an institute. This usually occurs in the silence of a lonely room. And if the recommendations incorporated much already observed in Ernest J. Reece's 1936 study of the curriculum in library schools,3 it should be observed that this was another group saying it.If this seems to be getting a bit offthe track, it is only to remind you that the institute began with the people to be served. And want to begin with the people who are teaching the increasing number of library school students who will serve those people, particularly the increasing number of college graduates, the increasing number of graduate students, of school children, of specialists.The number of reference instructors increased from 87 to 145 between 1958 4 and 1961.5 These were not all full-time faculty, for the same period saw a greater increase in part-time instructors, from 30 in 1958 to 74 in 1961. Nor were all of the 87 persons teaching ref. erence in 1958 still in harness in 1961-only 53. New names in the 1961 roster numbered 92, about two-thirds of the total. …

Noise Level of Hospital Environment

Aim: Noise pollution is one of the important problems among the environmental pollution. In this present study we tried to show that the problem of noise at hospital is still exceeding and investigate the sources of noise that annoyed the patients mostly. We measured the sound levels randomly selected in wards and asked the patients the causes of the noise annoying the patients mostly. Material and Methods:Noise level were measured during August 2009 by Testo 816 Sound Lever Meter in Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty. Total of the readings were taken in the day time between 09.00 am and 15.00 pm with three minutes intervals Results: Daily sound level is differing between 45 dBA and 61 dBA. Measured sound level at the beginning time was significantly lower in Neurology and Otorhinolaryngology wards compare to others. During the day time maximum Leq was observed in Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation ward (61 dBA). Telephone bells and conversations, Talking in corridors and water running from faucet declared as a most frequent of noise source by the patients. Conclusion: Activities of medical and non-medical staff are the common source of noise which suggests the noise pollution is mostly “manmade”. In order to solve the noise problem at hospitals there is great need to staff education, administrative rules and may be first of all national guidelines for hospital noise.

Iris Murdoch's <i>The Belt</i>: Tragedy, Love, and Religion

Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence.2

Iris Murdoch’s The Bell: Tragedy, Love, and Religion

Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence.2

Monophonic sound source separation with an unsupervised network of spiking neurones

We incorporate auditory-based features into an unconventional pattern classification system, consisting of a network of spiking neurones with dynamical and multiplicative synapses. Although the network does not need any training and is autonomous, the analysis is dynamic and capable of extracting multiple features and maps. The neural network allows computing a binary mask that acts as a dynamic switch on a speech vocoder made of an FIR gammatone analysis/synthesis bank of 256 filters. We report experiments on separation of speech from various intruding sounds (siren, telephone bell, speech, etc.) and compare our approach to other techniques by using the log spectral distortion (LSD) metric.

Subjective evaluation of synthesized signals

Many kinds of synthesized signals are used in our daily life, for example, warning signals for: vehicles moving in reverse, signaling the end of a washing machine cycle, electric pots boiling, and telephone bells. Sometimes these signals are quite similar and are mistaken for each other. The present investigation was designed to examine what kind of synthesized signals are appropriate for each purpose. The impressions of the timbre of the signals were judged using semantic differentials and identification of the signals was also examined. The results of these subjective evaluations were examined in relation to the physical properties of the signals. Since the impressions of sounds are sometimes different in different cultures, cross-cultural comparison was also made in order to find appropriate signals that can be used internationally.

Ultrasonic alarm device

An ultrasonic alarm device has a detector for detecting a reflected ultrasonic wave in a watching area to obtain a Doppler signal due to motion of a person, a Schmitt circuit for converting the detection output into a pulse output and a waveform shaping circuit for shaping the pulse output into a pulse train having a certain pulse width. The output of the waveform shaping circuit is fed in parallel to two band-pass digital filters, one for the Doppler signal and the other for noise signals. Each of the filters comprises two monostable multivibrators connected in parallel and an AND gate having three inputs of which one is connected through an inverter to the output of one monostable multivibrator, a second is connected to the output of the second monostable multivibrator and the third to the input of the monostable multivibrators. The output of the Doppler signal filter is fed through a first integrator to a level decision circuit while the output of the noise signal circuit is fed through a second integrator to the first integrator. The level decision circuit is connected through a third integrator to an output circuit which produces an alarm signal when the signal level is above a predetermined value. Through this circuitry, the Doppler signal due to motion of a person is distinguished from external disturbances such as those due to wind, a telephone bell, an electric click or movement of a small animal, bird or insect.

Telecommunication Performance of Persons with Hearing Handicap in Relation to Speech Reception Threshold

This study is concerned with the ability of hearing-impaired persons to perceive speech via the telephone and in particular with the possible benefit gained by the use of different kinds of auxiliary equipment (receiver amplifier, extra watch receiver, hearing aid in telemagnetic or microphone position, so-called combined amplifier, and combinations of these). In 203 hard-of-hearing subjects, grouped according to the speech reception threshold (SRT) of the better ear, the efficiency of the devices under test was investigated at two different line attenuations, one representing a good telephone connection and one representing a rather poor connection. It is concluded that persons with a slight hearing impairment (SRT:0--25 dB in the better ear) are able to use the telephone without special devices. The same applies to the majority of those with moderate hearing impairment (SRT:30--45 dB). For persons having a more severe hearing loss, a telephone with a receiving amplifier, or the individual hearing aid combined with the ordinary telephone set, can largely compensate for difficulties experienced when using the telephone. To complete the experiments, the audibility of a number of telephone bells was assessed. The bell in the standard set had low audibility for all the investigated groups of persons. Some of the other sound sources offered somewhat less difficulty.

Automated desensitization of stutterers to use of the telephone

An automated procedure which uses tape recordings for desensitization of stutterers who had difficulty in the use of the telephone is described. The stutterers listened to an instructor's voice that urged relaxation, imagination of a pleasant scene, and appropriate vocal responses. These responses were recorded on a second tape recorder, and the stutterer later listened to his own recording. A disconnected telephone was at hand during the practice sessions and sound effects of telephone bells ringing, etc., were included. Three cases are described.

Simple Reaction-Times to Speech and Non-Speech Stimuli

Two experiments were carried out involving the measurement of simple reaction-time when subjects responded to speech and to non-speech stimuli. In the first, subjects were required to make a speech response (uttering the vowel [a: ]) to one speech stimulus (the vowel [a: ]) and three non-speech stimuli (a complex tone, a telephone bell and a click). The click stimulus gave significantly longer reaction-times than the other three stimuli; since all stimuli were equated for peak intensity delivered to the subjects' ears, this was due to the short duration of the click (25 msec). There was no evidence that compatibility between the speech stimulus and the speech response had any influence on reaction-time. The second experiment employed a 2 X 2 design with 2 stimuli and 2 response modes. The stimuli were the vowel [a: ] and the telephone bell; the response modes were key-pressing and uttering the vowel [a: ]. The speech stimulus and the speech response gave significantly longer reaction-times than the non-speech simtulus and response. The minimum time for a reaction requiring speech reception is of the order of 180 msec. and the use of the motor speech mechanism adds about 30 msec. to reaction-time. Again no interaction was found between stimulus and response and this is probably due to the extremely simple nature of the speech tasks imposed.

Special devices for the hearing-handicapped patient.

THE HARD-OF-HEARING patient often has communication problems that are not solved by the use of a hearing aid or by lipreading. Some of these problems involve the use of the telephone, radio, and television, and the inability to hear the door chime, telephone bell, and alarm clock. The solution to these problems can be frustrating not only to the patient but also to the otologist and audiologist whom he consults regarding them. The purpose of this paper is to familiarize the reader with some of the instruments that have been developed to solve these problems. All are available either through the telephone company business office or the patient's own hearing aid dispenser. Telephone Communication The telephone represents a major avenue of communication and one that offers the hard-of-hearing person considerable difficulty. Modern hearing aids often provide a telephone switch (Fig 1). Moving the switch turns off the aid's microphone and

Cardiovascular sympathetic tone and stress response related to personality patterns and exercise habits: A potential cardiac risk and screening test

Among 200 professional men, those with emotionally highly excitable personality patterns and those with completely sedentary living habits displayed the highest cardiac sympathetic tone at rest, and the highest cardiac adrenergic response levels under mild standard sensory and mental stresses (telephone bell, flicker light, mental arithmetic). The criteria used for assessment of sympathetic cardiac adrenergic activity were heart rate, length of the isometric tension period of the left ventricle, and relative length of the left ventricular systole in per cent of the cardiac cycle. No clear relations were demonstrable between personality patterns and exercise habits on the one hand, and blood pressure levels and reactions, serum cholesterol concentration, obesity and smoking habits on the other. Parental cardiovascular morbidity was higher in the groups of subjects with exaggerated sympathetic activity. The applied technic for direct measurement of cardiac chronotropic and inotropic adrenergic activity at rest and under stress is expected to be useful for prospective epidemiologic and preventive cardiac reconditioning studies.

The Teaching of Reference in American Library Schools

MISS HARRIS has admirably set forth the present state of reference service and the needs and shortcomings in present-day training of reference librarians. Her moving account of the increasing amount of telephone reference service moves me to assure her that take the matter of For Whom the Telephone Bell Rings almost as seriously as the matter of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Also, for the record, am not scared of automation, am grateful for it. For one thing, what would we do without the telephone?Now propose to present a much more superficial view of what we are teaching in the 32 American Library Association accredited graduate library schools, trying to answer three questions:1. Who is teaching reference?2. What is being taught?3. How is it being taught?Numbers, not names, must suffice for the answer to Who. Some of us have been around a long time. had a fire in my house last fall and all sorts of things boiled up, including a letter from Louis Shores, written in the mid-thirties, in which he said, I try to teach a few titles well. In the same batch of disarranged papers found an old freshman theme of mine on the evils of girls' smoking, piously written in a round, childish hand, with nary a footnote. If had researched the subject back there in 1924, might not have concluded so positively that these girls always wound up in a house of ill fame. Times have changed.Now share Wallace J. Bonk's belief that and calm discussion, coupled with patient effort and a determination to produce the bes~ possible kind of reference and bibliography course, would -result in something more professionally desirable than this present state of affairs. 1But who are these people who will gather for sensible and calm discussion? Who are teaching these reference courses?That meeting in Cleveland in April, 1962, sponsored by the Library Services Branch of the U.S. Office of Education and Western Reserve University to consider the future of library education got me all stirred up. Having read the two issues of Library Trends on the Future of Library Service: Demographic Aspects and Implications, 2 stuffed to the gills with figures on people, their geographic distribution, their doomed cities, their Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, their age structure, their baby boom, the attending librarians and library school representatives considered the types of competence required to fill the library's changed or changing role. With these in mind, they turned to types and levels of library school faculties, to admission requirements, to the curriculum, teaching methods, interdisciplinary instruction, and research.The great value of the meeting was not so much the original thinking which came out of it, but the opportunity to say out loud to one another what had been said before by other voices in other rooms. For no one expects brilliant, original thinking to take place at an institute. This usually occurs in the silence of a lonely room. And if the recommendations incorporated much already observed in Ernest J. Reece's 1936 study of the curriculum in library schools,3 it should be observed that this was another group saying it.If this seems to be getting a bit offthe track, it is only to remind you that the institute began with the people to be served. And want to begin with the people who are teaching the increasing number of library school students who will serve those people, particularly the increasing number of college graduates, the increasing number of graduate students, of school children, of specialists.The number of reference instructors increased from 87 to 145 between 1958 4 and 1961.5 These were not all full-time faculty, for the same period saw a greater increase in part-time instructors, from 30 in 1958 to 74 in 1961. Nor were all of the 87 persons teaching ref. erence in 1958 still in harness in 1961-only 53. New names in the 1961 roster numbered 92, about two-thirds of the total. …

New Sonic Methods for Arresting Attention

PROBABLY THE MOST commonly used audible signalling device is the electric bell or buzzer. Of the two types of bell demonstrated the smaller is the one used in the normal telephone set, while the larger is used as an extension bell where a louder ring is required. Figure I shows the principle of operation of the telephone bell. Movement of the armature, to which the striker is attached, is brought about by the interaction between the central permanent magnet and the electro-magnet produced by current flowing through the coils. The changing polarity of the electro-magnet (due to the alternating voltage applied to the coils) alternately attracts and repels each end of the armature, in which magnetism is induced by the permanent magnet. Although it is quite easy to produce an adequate sound from a telephone bell it is found on closer examination that it is inefficient in its conversion of electrical to sound energy. In order to determine the efficiency of an electro-acoustic transducer it is necessary to utilize the formula relating to electrical and acoustic power. These are summarized in Figure 2, which shows the similar nature of the two basic formulas. In the case of acoustic power, the relationship is shown between the power generated by a point source and the rate of flow of energy through unit area, or intensity (I) at a given distance from the sound source. The further relation between intensity and sound pressure enables acoustic power to be determined from a measurement of sound pressure, which is quite simply carried out by means of a sound level meter. Sound levels are measured in phons. The phon scale is logarithmic and takes into account the frequency response characteristic of the human ear. Figure 3, a set of equal loudness contours, shows that the sensation which a sound produces in the ear depends on the frequency of that sound. The loudness level of a tone in phons is numerically equal to the sound pressure level of a 1,000 cycles/second tone which sounds equally loud. This means, for instance, that for a sound at 100 cycles per second to have a loudness of zero phons it must have a sound pressure one

Ultrasonics and progressive deafness.

The solution of the very important and difficult problems presented by progressive deafness due to otosclerosis—its cause, prevention, and cure—is to be found in the biological implications and applications of the newly acquired and as yet incompletely correlated data in the field of ultrasonics. As there are light waves which are beyond the physiological range of human visual perception, there are sound waves that are imperceptible to the human ear—the ultrasonics. The most silent centrifuge has an ultrasonic specter extending to 100 000 cy/sec. The telephone bell produces frequencies to 50 000 cy/sec, powerful, but silent, imperceptible to us. The traffic of everyday life, in the train, bus, car, next to the audible noise, hides a tremendous amount of silent sound which is frightfully dangerous to our hearing organ. A significant fact of modern research is that the intensities of ultrasonics are of not primary importance in influencing the chemical changes in human proteins. Sonics and ultrasonics are e...

Ultrasonics and Progressive Deafness

The solution of the very important and difficult problems presented by progressive deafness due to otosclerosis—its cause, prevention, and cure—is to be found in the biological implications and applications of the newly acquired and as yet incompletely correlated data in the field of ultrasonics. As there are light waves which are beyond the physiological range of human visual perception, there are sound waves that are imperceptible to the human ear—the ultrasonics. The most silent centrifuge has an ultrasonic specter extending to 100 000 cy/sec. The telephone bell produces frequencies to 50 000 cy/sec, powerful, but silent, imperceptible to us. The traffic of everyday life, in the train, bus, car, next to the audible noise, hides a tremendous amount of silent sound which is frightfully dangerous to our hearing organ. A significant fact of modern research is that the intensities of ultrasonics are of not primary importance in influencing the chemical changes in human proteins. Sonics and ultrasonics are equally able to provoke alteration in tissue proteins. Low frequencies of ultrasonics cause liquefaction of thixotropic gels. This occurrence leads to an increase of permeability of the cell membrane and thus advances chemical changes within the protein. The Ph changes are accompanied with a shift within the protein fractions. An increase of the gamma globulins, and a fibrotic trend of defense is in the making. The result of this happening is the structural changes in the living tissue (collagen, bone). The sonorous vibrations are passing from the air into the solid bone of the ossicular chain and into the water medium (liquor) of the labyrinth to arrive at the perceiving apparatus of the cochlea in the inner ear. The sound waves, by reaching new media, are partly reflected and partly transmitted, this according to the exerted resistance. The transferred energy from the air to the tissue is very small. The reflection by the different media can be considerable. The reflected ultrasonics have a damaging effect upon biological structures, because of sublimation of energetic effects (chemical thermic, etc.). Such considerable reflection occurs at the interface of bone medium (stapes) and water medium (the labyrinthin liquor). The body defense which tends to seal the spot of intrusion of ultrasonics develops a fibrotic diathesis. The first stone of this defense barrier is the first step toward the condition of deafness. At this topographic location of defense barrier (the oval window), the aural pathology has been recording for the last half-century the appearance of primary otosclerotic foci, without being able to give any satisfying explanation of their nature. The difficult problem of progressive deafness with its complexity of biological implication could not be understood until sufficient ultrasonic data have been explored and comprehended. The experimentally produced sclerosis by exposing living tissue to ultrasonic has enabled us to penetrate into this enigmatic condition.

The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, 1946–47

In July 1945, the Secretary of State for the Colonies appointed me leader of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey for two years, an appointment which brought a prospect of a free existence in the wide open spaces as compared with routine office life. I soon found this prospect fading over the horizon. For months I was tied to an office, early and late, surrounded by scores of papers, insistent questioners and a ceaseless telephone bell. All this was necessary before the stores were ordered, packed and dispatched and the staff appointed.

The Future of the Radiographer

My presence here is due to a chance remark made to Mr. Furby in what I had imagined was the privacy of my own office, which only shows how careful a bridle one should keep on one's tongue. I said that I thought one could indulge in very interesting speculation on what the future held in store for the radiographer. Mr. Furby said he imagined his Society might like to hear my ideas on the subject. I said that it was only six years since I spoke to them about Cat and Kittens, and I didn't think they would have recovered yet. He said that he thought the kittens would have grown by now into cats, and the cats would have gone to the catacombs. Then my telephone bell rang and Mr. Melville's voice said: “Would it be all right for me to give my paper on April 13?” Which shows the extraordinary efficiency of your officers! At the same time Mr. Melville asked whether he could help me by preparing any lantern slides showing the future of the radiographer. I wasn't sure whether these would have to be passed by the Board of Film Censors, so I thought we had better not risk it. So I have no slides nor diagrams to show you this evening. I propose simply to put before you the facts as I see them, both for and against the radiographer having any future.