The strangest thing I stumbled across this morning:

“In the late 1920s, New York City’s Noise Abatement Commission conducted tests at the Bronx Zoo. Readings from a new device (the audiometer) indicated that “a lion, whose roar is generally regarded as among the most terrific and awe-inspiring of sounds, could roar his loudest in a busy city street and not be heard for a distance of more than 20 or 30 feet.” Though the lion’s roar was eclipsed by the growl of traffic, the investigators were not concerned with the humiliated lion’s pride (nor the soundness of his sleep).”

That’s by Peter A. Coates, in an article called “The Strange Stillness of the Past: Toward an Environmental History of Sound,” in Environmental History.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Cars, Cities, Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.