Page 10 - Summer2022

From the President Maureen Stone The Past Is Prologue June 2022 was the 182nd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and its 93rd year of existence. We are approaching our Centenary Celebration in 2029. So, this is a fitting time to look back at the Society’s history and think about its future. In September 1928, Wallace Waterfall began writing col- leagues to start a society of Architectural Acousticians. “Within the last few years there have been a great many developments in the subject of architectural acous- tics. Architects, builders, and the public in general are beginning to recognize in the building industry a new engineering science which is approaching a state of devel- opment comparable with other engineering sciences... The thought of some organization such as a Society of Acous- tical Engineers immediately suggests itself... It is realized that if the society is really to be successful in promoting the interests of Architectural Acoustics and the indus- try which has developed around this subject, it must be organized on a highly scientific basis and be kept free from reproach in all its activities” (from a letter by Wal- lace Waterfall, October 10, 1928, to a group of individuals from universities, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Riverbank Laboratories, and the Bureau of Standards). Waterfall was persuaded to open the Society to other fields, so that by December 1928 a group met to write a constitution and bylaws, which were approved at the first business meeting of the ASA on May 10, 1929. The minutes of this meeting were published in the first issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) (asa.scitation.org/toc/jas/1/1) in October 1929 (Figures 1 and 2). The Society was founded by individuals from universities and employees of companies such as Bell Telephone Labo- ratories, AT&T, CG Khan music, movie studios, and others, all of whom needed research published that was relevant to them. Full membership in the ASA was limited to those who were doing experimental work on the subject of acoustics. Associate membership was aimed more at companies and those interested in the sales end of the work. Their motivation for starting this new journal and the Soci- ety was the increase in new science in the field of acoustics. ThesecompaniesneededtheASA,andmanyofthembecame sustaining members to support the Society. There was no government funding or intervention in research at that time. Waterfall felt that “the organization...must be on a very high plane...commercialism must be held strictly in the background, or we could not expect the support of those true scientists whosemembershipisessentialtotheSociety’swelfare”(from a letter by Waterfall on September 27, 1928, to Armin Elmen- dorf, consulting engineer for the Celotex Corporation). However, lack of commercialism did not mean lack of participation by employees of private companies. On the contrary, for many years, membership of the Society was composed of employees of private companies and some universities (see Table 1). Shortly after the founding of the ASA and the publica- tion of the first issue of JASA, the stock market crashed Figure 1. Cover of the first issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA). This issue is free access and can be found at asa.scitation.org/toc/jas/1/1. Figure 2. Table of Contents of the first issue of JASA. 10 Acoustics Today • Summer 2022