Page 37 - Winter 2011

The Acoustical Society of America
Vern Knudsen had close associations and enduring friendships with other acousticians. This led to the formation of the ASA during a meeting at a beach club in Santa Monica during the summer of 1928. This meeting is referenced in a 10 October 1928 letter from Wallace Waterfall, of The Celotex Company, to Vern Knudsen and Floyd Watson, which says he is ready to take initial steps in the formation of the “Society of Acoustical Engineers.” One could suppose that we became the ASA as SAE was already taken by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
In the annotated transcript of his interview with the American Institute of Physics found in the documents retrieved from his home, he talks about this meeting at the beach and says “I invited Waterfall and Watson to have lunch with me at the Gables Beach Club, of which I had just become a member. I thought it made a very fine investment because the original membership fee of $500 included lifetime dues. I figured I had maybe 40 or 50 years of life and $500 didn’t seem very much to pay for both initiation and life dues. Well, the Beach Club lasted only a few days after we had this meet- ing, but it lasted long enough for us to have this meeting...at which we decided there should be an organization known as the Acoustical Society of America.” Ms. Brown did some research and found a clipping in the Los Angeles Times archives from 1 September 1930 concerning the fire that swept though the club and destroyed it. This article mentions “the club’s financial failure some time ago,” prior to the fire.
Dr. Knudsen maintained a long series of technical corre- spondences with Watson, Waterfall, Harvey Fletcher of the Bell Telephone Laboratory, as well as Richard Bolt, one of Knudsen’s students. Among the contents of the Watson file were the many holiday cards that Floyd Watson sent picturing
Watson in exotic locales such as the desert, mountains, forests, and seashore. Another example of how closely intertwined the acoustics connections were back then is that Wallace Waterfall was Floyd R. Watson’s student at the University of Illinois.
One letter in the file states volumes about Vern Knudsen. F. V. Hunt was awarded the Society’s Gold Medal in 1969, two years after Knudsen was so honored. In his response to Dr. Knudsen’s 16 October 1969 letter of congratulation, Hunt writes “Your thoughtfulness is typical and reminds me of an incident in the middle 1930’s that you have probably long since forgotten. In our corridor discussion of a paper I had presented, you patted me on the back and said, ‘We ought to make you a Fellow of the Society.’ I was flattered of course, and convinced that this was one of your startling ideas expressed ahead of its time. But sure enough, I did get made a Fellow shortly thereafter and I have always felt that I had you to thank for it. I can’t say that the promotion was crucial in shaping my future, but it did provide warmth, encourage- ment, and incentive.” This is but one of many letters express- ing this sentiment.
Lastly, a note about the Society’s first meeting is in a 22 March 1929 telegram (See Fig. 5) from Harvey Fletcher telling Dr. Knudsen that the meeting will be delayed one week to be coincide with the SMPE meeting which reads “PROF V O KNUDSEN= UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOSANGELES CALIF= HAVE CHANGED DATE OF MEETING OF ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY TO MAY TENTH AND ELEVENTH STOP MOTION PICTURE ENGINEERS MEET IN NEWYORK SAME WEEK STOP HOPE THIS DOES NOT UPSET YOUR PLANS STOP THOSE THAT I COULD REACH BY TELEPHONE THOUGHT IT ADVIS- ABLE STOP EXPECTING A NUMBER FROM HOLLY- WOOD= HARVEY FLETCHER.”
Fig. 5. 22 March 1929 telegram from Harvey Fletcher.
Knudsen’s Attic 33