Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-10-31
Expert Wants to Straighten
Capitol Noise Kinks.
HAS A BRAND-NEW CURE
Old Theories Are Exploded by James
Henry Harper. VAC.
s1LKEN WEB DOES THE JOB
Says It Strains Sound So That
Speakers May Often Recognize
Their Own Voices.

intendent Of the Capitol passes the
| door of one of those decorated, triple
| vaulted public hearing rooms in the
House Office building he cries like a
child. And no wonder. A public hear
| ing room with such Woody acoustics
that the faintest whisper becomes the
wall Of a werewolf and continued
conversation Stimulates the roar of
| shotted artillery isn't much OF a tan
| gible asset around the Capitol. So Mr..
Woods has been worried and has been
looking around for a reliable remedy
| for the trouble.
| All this is by way Of introduction
to James Henry Harper, VAC, VINO
| may be called upon to doctor the public
| hearing rooms. Mr.. Harper is a little
| man with grayiSh hair and twinkly
| eyes, who has new method for treat
ing cirrhosis of the acoustics.
Cures That Failed.
| Up to a recent date whenever an archi-
| tect put up an auditorium or something
| of the sort that was a poem from the
outside. but acoustically was so impossible
as to make straightaway talk sound like
the last mouthings Of John Mccullough,
there were only a couple of cures known.
One of them was to line the inside OF the
upper part of the auditorium with felt
and clutter 1t all up with fatty uphol-
stored furniture and draperies and soft
stuff of all kinds, on the theory that 1t
would soak up the superf1uous sound. An
other method was to string a bunch of
wires across the top of the auditorium
This was in the hope that the wires would
strain the sound. letting all the extra
rumbling and jumbling filter through and
go out the skylights and bounce the use
n QaI hn
These two methods do not amount to
much. but they comprise the whole list
The felt and furniture and hangings and
other things used sound sponges made
building fearfully insanitary. and the
wires strung up In the air made 1t look
like telegraph office in a busy city.
Mr.. Harper's Discovery.
But Mr.. Harper has a brand-new
method that has worked fine, he says. He
discovered that sound doesn't travel in
waves, like light, but jumps along by
magnetic impulse. and he has figured
out too. that it doesn't make a bit OF
difference what material is used in
building, Just so long as its shape is
correct. This discovery simply destroys
the regulation theory. and many learned
professors occupying chairs in colleges
have amused themselves. Mr.. Harper
says, by jumping up and down on his
ITdIe. But now he IeelS DelIeT, because,
he says, most of them are coming around
10 his way of thinking.
Anyhow. when Mr.. Harper. who has
quit regular engineering and now devotes
his entire time to ventilation, acoustics
and chromatics. is called in on job. he
does not proceed to bull the felt market
and order all the thick furniture in sight.
First Locates the Kinks.
He looks at the shape of the hall or
auditorium or theater or church, or what
lever 1t may be. and then he stands in the
middle of the main floor and claps his
hands or yells. He does this many times
until he knows all about the reverbera
tons and the resonance and such. Then
when he has this all down, he does some
more figuring and finally winds up by in
stalling spider web of silk threads.
forming an invisible canopy to keep the
sound from going on up and up and up
and playing hide and seek midst Doric
columns and Gothic windows and pure
Greek pilasters and Georgian domes and
other architectural delights but acoustic
horrors.
Mr. Harper explained to a Star reporter
today that he uses silk threads because
silk is full of magnetism and potentiality
and all that. So when he stretches his
invisible spider web of silk across hall
1t acts like real ceiling and sound hasn't
chance Of getting by to reverberate and
NSeASS
| generally He claims that he has tackled
auditoriums that would make the clearest
| voice that ever came out of the sllvery
| throat of an oratorical hcadliner sound
| like the Swiss bell ringers on a jag, ana
| fixed them up with his silk spiders web
until the acoustic properties were perfect.
Mean Tril1 on DR.. Parkhurst.
/ There's DR.. Parkhurst's church in New
!, York The Tiffanys built that. and they
laid themselves out on 1t. and 1t was a
! beauty. But the acoustics were fierce.
| Every time Dr. Parkhurst got up in the
| pulpit to talk it sounded to folks in the
| rear of the church like Kosher riot on
the East Side.
| So they called in seven or eight ex-
| perts and most of them wanted to felt
| everything and put in some more furni-
| ture. But finally they gave Mr.. Harper
the job aand he clapped his hands and
| yelled and put in a spiders web and
| everything was fine. That Is. 1t would
| have been. but just before the church
i opened in the fall somebody who didn I
| like Mr.. Harper climbed in window
| and cut a big hole in the invisible spider
| web, and when DR.. Parkhurst got up to
| talk some of his voice got through the
| hole and the rest tried to, and Mr.. IIar-
per was very much annoyed.
Mr.. Woods Thinking It Over.
| Elliot Woods has not decided just what
| he will do about those public hearing
! rooms where you can't hear. Probably,
though he will give Mr.. Harper trial,
and that is all that Mr.. Harper says he
wants. He has just finished the job of
fixing up the Swedenborgian Church on
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