Yeang, Chen-Pang (Author)
In this paper, I examine efforts of telephone and radio engineers and researchers from 1910 to 1940 to measure noise as unwanted signals. Two approaches were adopted, one aural, the other visual. The staff of American Telephone and Telegraph Company employed an ear-balancing method, in which a measurer determined the intensity of noise by comparing it with a standard referential tone. This method relied on assumptions about the human measurer's aural perception. It had a close relationship with the research at Bell Laboratories on speech recognition and hearing physiology. Also, it was used to measure the electrical noise in telephone transmission lines and atmospheric electromagnetic static that interfered with radio communications for the purpose of gauging and improving the performance of the telecommunication systems. On the other hand, physicists at the U.K. Radio Research Board applied the oscilloscope to record the waveforms of atmospheric static. Built upon work on cathode-ray displays, this method inherited a long visual tradition of curve tracing. The choice of this method was associated with their aim of measurement: to reveal the detailed processes of meteorological events that incurred electric discharge and, more importantly, to determine the exact locations of such events. These attempts to measure noise indicated a trend of conceiving concrete acoustic noise in terms of abstract, informational noise.
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