Standardizing Car Sound---Integrating Europe? International Traffic Noise Abatement and the Emergence of a European Car Identity, 1950--1975 (2012)
The postwar motorization boom in Western Europe implicated rising complaints about road vehicle noise. By the end of the 1960s, traffic noise abatement became an urgent topic for European regulators and automobile engineers. The article investigates how car sound, its measurement and the standardization of measurement procedures developed during the early postwar decades following World War II, and how this relates to European integration. It shows that the standardization of car noise measurement affected market integration and the harmonization of technical regulation on the European level, thus shaping the political integration process. Furthermore, standardization and harmonization stimulated the circulation of knowledge and the rise of a new field of knowledge organized around the standardized and harmonized issues. Although the standardization and harmonization efforts did not result in the homogenization of European automobile technology, they did contribute to the narrative construction of a European car identity.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Deutsch, Donald R.;
(2013)
The SQL StandarD: How it Happened
Thesis
Vinsel, Lee Jared;
(2011)
Federal Regulatory Management of the Automobile in the United States, 1966--1988
Article
Griset, Pascal;
Schafer, Valérie;
(2011)
Hosting the World Wide Web Consortium for Europe: From CERN to INRIA
Article
Caroline Lucas;
(March 2019)
The Democracy Lag: Updating Electoral Law and the Need for a Digital Bill of Rights [Opinion]
Article
Takehiko Hashimoto;
(2017)
The Construction of the System of Aeronautical Standards for Safe Air Navigation before World War II
Chapter
Sewald, Ronda L.;
(2012)
Forced Listening: The Contested Use of Loudspeakers for Commercial and Political Messages in the Public Soundscape
Article
Mirowski, Alexander;
(2017)
At the Electronic Crossroads Once Again: The Myth of the Modern Computer Utility in the United States
Article
Tom Kane;
Nick Novelli;
(March 2019)
Technology for Governance, Politics, and Democracy [Special Issue Introduction]
Article
Silvan Pollozek;
Jan-Hendrik Passoth;
(2023)
Provisional by design: Frontex data infrastructures and the Europeanization of migration and border control
Article
M'charek, Amade;
Hagendijk, Rob;
Vries, Wiebe de;
(2013)
Equal before the Law: On the Machinery of Sameness in Forensic DNA Practice
Book
Brice Laurent;
(2022)
European Objects: The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization
Article
Lagendijk, Vincent;
(2011)
“An Experience Forgotten Today”: Examining Two Rounds of European Electricity Liberalization
Book
Andrew Denning;
(2024)
Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa
Book
Ana Muñiz;
(2022)
Borderland Circuitry: Immigration Surveillance in the United States and Beyond
Article
Lagendijk, Vincent;
(2012)
“To Consolidate Peace”? The International Electro-technical Community and the Grid for the United States of Europe
Article
Schot, Johan;
Buiter, Hans;
Anastasiadou, ;
(2011)
The Dynamics of Transnational Railway Governance in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century
Article
Laborie, Léonard;
(2011)
Fragile Links, Frozen Identities: The Governance of Telecommunication Networks and Europe (1944--53)
Article
Lagendijk, Vincent;
Vleuten, Erik van der;
(2010)
Interpreting transnational infrastructure vulnerability: 4/11 and the historical dynamics of transnational electricity governance
Chapter
Laer, Arthe Van;
Bussière, E.;
(2007)
Recherche et technologie ou la “sextuple tutelle” des États sur “la Commission, éternelle mineure”; (Research and Technology or “sextuple trust” under the States “the Commission, eternal minor”)
Article
Lee Jared Vinsel;
(2015)
Designing to the Test: Performance Standards and Technological Change in the U.S. Automobile after 1966
Be the first to comment!