Page 64 - Volume 12, Issue 2 - Spring 2012

Passings
Dick Stern
Acoustical Society of America Melville, New York 11747
Kenneth McKechnie Eldred
1929–2012
Kenneth McKechnie Eldred devoted his entire professional career to practi- cal applications of a wide-range of engineering noise and vibration con- trol principles helping to make both communities and industrialized por- tions of the world quieter. He received world-wide recognition for his contri- butions and was considered by many of his colleagues to be among the best practitioners in the nation.
Ken received the S.B. (General Engineering) degree with a combina- tion of courses in naval architecture, marine transportation, and business administration in 1950 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he also took graduate courses in acoustics. He supplemented his educa- tion with graduate courses in mathe- matics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Early in Ken’s professional career (1950–1954), he served as director of shipboard vibration, noise control for subma- rine machinery and propellers, and underwater sound activ- ities at the Boston Naval Shipyard Sound and Vibration Laboratory. He also served as chief of the Physical Acoustics Section, Bio-Acoustics Branch, at the United States Air Force Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, Ohio, where he worked closely with Henning von Gierke from 1954 to 1957. At the Wright Air Development Center, research in the eval- uation and abatement of Air Force noise sources, including both rockets and jet aircraft, was directed by Ken. Ken served as vice president and consultant in acoustics and vibration while at the Western Electro-Acoustics Laboratory in Los Angeles, California, from 1957 to 1963. The wide range of his consulting activities included the vibration of complex vehi- cle structures, sonic fatigue, noise and vibration of aircraft and missiles, model-scale simulation studies, evaluation of noise and vibration in manufacturing facilities, environmen- tal noise studies, and architectural acoustics.
In 1963 Ken was appointed Director of Research at Wyle Laboratories, El Segundo, California, in the newly formed
Research Department with the direc- tive to expand Wyle’s testing facilities for the Air Force in view of the increasing technical requirements of the space program. Ken joined the Cambridge, Massachusetts office of Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) in 1973 where he served as group vice president, principal consultant, and director of many outstanding profes- sionals. While at BBN, Ken also pro- vided consulting services for clients including airport operators and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Noise Abatement and Control.
After leaving BBN in 1982, he formed Ken Eldred Engineering locat- ed first in Concord, Massachusetts, and later in East Boothbay, Maine. For many years he continued providing
important consulting services to airport and industrial clients.
Ken Eldred is a founding member of the Institute of Nose Control Engineering (INCE) of the USA. He served as direc- tor, chair of the finance committee, and president.
At the INCE/USA-sponsored INTER-NOISE 72 Congress, Ken made a seminal contribution to the passage of the Noise Control Act of 1972, an act that guided American noise policy for nearly a decade. Ken served on the Supersonic Aircraft Neighborhood Noise Committee for the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) which reported to William M. Magruder, director of the Supersonic Aircraft Division of DOT. Magruder later became a special assistant to President Richard Nixon and was invited to be the keynote speaker at the INTER-NOISE 72 opening luncheon on October 4, 1972. Magruder accepted, and his announced topic was “Technology, National Goals, and the Administration’s Noise Program.” Ken and others met with Magruder just before the luncheon and, after a telephone call by Magruder to the White House, were assured that President Nixon would sign a bill if passed by the Congress. The announcement was made at the luncheon; and, after
Acoustics Today accepts contributions for “Passings.” Submissions of about 250 words that may be edited in MSWord or plain text files should be e-mailed to AcousticsToday@aip.org. Photographs may be informal, but must be at least 300 dpi. Please send the text and photographs in separate files.
Passings 63