Page 57 - Acoustics Today Summer 2011

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. That feat is all the References
more remarkable when you consider the variety of topics those
articles addressed. These include the effects of humidity on the
45 velocity of sound and the sound of the highland bagpipe.
Topics related to perception include an article on residual
masking at low frequencies6 and on a speech synthesizer of his
7
own design. Of course, there were architectural topics that
addressed the effects of non-uniform wall distributions of absorbing materials on the acoustics of rooms,8 the acoustics of coupled rooms,9 and the acoustical properties of carpeting,10 as well as articles on individual concert hall designs.11
A great contemporary New York philosopher named Allen S. Konigsberg, better known as Woody Allen, once wrote a movie called Zelig about a “human chameleon” who would automatically transform himself into the culture of those who were near him. Cyril was an “acoustical chameleon.” Among physicists, he was a physicist; among students, he was a professor; among publishers, he was an author and editor; among historians, he was an historian; among audio engineers, he was an audio engineer; among environmentalists, he was a noise control engineer; among musicians, he was the world’s premier concert hall designer; and among members of the Acoustical Society of America, he was our Renaissance man.
If I were pressed to identify Cyril’s greatest accomplish- ment, I think it was his ability to apply the principles of science and of engineering, which most people think of as cold and inert, to creating a feeling of intimacy among thousands of music lovers simultaneously.
1 V. O. Knudsen and C. M. Harris, Acoustical Designing in Architecture (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1950); reprinted by the Acoustical Society of America, 1980.
2 W. Rudmose, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 22(4), 521–522 (1950).
3 C. M. Harris, Noise Control in Buildings (McGraw-Hill, 1994), ISBN 0-07-026887-8; reprinted by the Institute of Noise Control
Engineering.
4 C. M. Harris, “Absorption of sound in air versus humidity and
temperature,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 40(1), 148–159(1971); “Effects of humidity on the velocity of sound in air,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 49(3), 890–893 (1971); “Normalized curve of molecular absorp- tion versus humidity,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 57(1), 241–242 (1975).
5 C. M. Harris, M Eisentadt, and M. R. Weis, “Sounds of a high- land bagpipe,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 35(9), 1321–1327 (1963).
6 C. M. Harris, “Residual masking at low frequencies”, J. Acoust.
Soc. Am. 31(8), 1110–1115 (1959).
7 C. M. Harris, “A speech synthesizer,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 25(5),
970–975 (1953).
8 C. M. Harris, “The effect of position on the acoustical absorp-
tion by a patch of material in a room,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 17(3), 242–244 (1946); H. Feshbach and C. M. Harris, “The effect of non-uniform distributions of absorbing material on the acoustics of rooms,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 18(2), 472–487 (1946).
9 C. M. Harris and H. Feshbach, “On the acoustics of coupled rooms,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 22(5), 572–578 (1950).
10 C. M. Harris, “Acoustical properties of carpet,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 27(6), 1077–1082 (1955).
11 C. M. Harris, “Acoustical design of Benaroya Hall, Seattle,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 110(6), 2841–2848 (2001); “Acoustical design of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 51(4), 1113–1126 (1972).
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