No jets or planes going overhead. No cars driving down your street to five miles away. No fans. No air conditioners. No music. No Radio. No TV.
The author thought that people of our day would find the silence nearly disorienting.
The only things you might hear were a water wheel, someone chopping wood, the occasional sound of an animal, that kind of thing.
It definitely made me consider it.
My wife and I went out to buy a new car the other day, and they had music playing in the dealership that just bounced around the big, open space, no baffling materials anywhere,
When we were about to drive away with the new car, the manager came over to thank us for buying a car, and asked if there were any issues we had that we wanted to tell him about. He said next time we came in, he would guarantee the sound level would be lower.
I also mentioned my six year old car that I had bought from the same dealership had internal trim defects in the seat and center console that were not natural wear and tear, but had spontaneously developed.
Without hesitation, he gave me his card, asked me to take pictures of the defects, and email them to him and describing them. He said they would do what they could to remedy them...on a six year old car with 90,000 miles on it.
That seemed like pretty good customer service to me. I was impressed.
The Year 1000, I need to read that. Thanks for the tip.
You might enjoy this one. “Civil War Acoustic Shadows”, Charles D Ross.
“During the Civil War, battles inaudible to those several miles from the fighting were sometimes heard clearly 100 miles from the battlefield, and the careers of prominent Civil War generals were affected by unusual battlefield acoustics. Ross (physics, Longwood College) examines the acoustics of six Civil War battles and looks at the role acoustics played in determining command decisions and in the outcome of the war”
It’s a very cool analysis of how prevailing winds, hills and valleys, forests etc projected sounds in some directions, and muffled them in others in amazing ways.