MEANING OF SOUND
I
N 1887, AN INQUIRY BY the Dutch parliament into the alarming working conditions in the nation’s factories revealed that young boys employed in the boilermaking industry often had to stand inside the boilers holding back rivets as they were hammered in. Willem Ansing, a former smith, socialist and active trade union president was one of the people interviewed. ‘Imagine’, he reported, ‘what it does to the brains of these children: they stay in the boilers all day long; it drives you crazy.Although I am not a boilermaker, I became deaf from it myself.’
‘I noticed!’, the president of the committee exclaimed, apparently responding to Ansing’s raised voice. Another member of the parliamentary committee seemed to be unimpressed by the union leader’s horror story:
I admit that it is not desirable to leave a boy in a boiler for an entire day.
Yet I am familiar with men who have done this work from the age of 13 to 16 . . . and who are very vigorous workers now. . . . But wouldn’t it be possible to do something about it, for instance by putting wadding into one’s ears? . . . [D]on’t you know of bosses who do something in order to fi ght the adverse consequences?
‘No’, Ansing answered. And ‘to put wadding in one’s ears won’t do, since the boys also need to listen to the things the men standing outside say to them.’1
Another interviewee, Heinrich Struve, a forty-year-old engineer, didn’t see a problem at all. For two years he had maintained an offi ce in a boiler workshop with about a hundred workers. ‘Yet,’ he stated, ‘it did not do me any harm, I even regretted the moments the knocking was absent.’ And Hendrik Suyver, aged fi fty-two, manufacturer of boilers and a former boiler-boy himself, needed only a few words to answer the question of the link between his past profession and his impaired hearing: ‘All of us get deaf.’2
That the engineer did not ‘hear’ the problem of noise, or unwanted sound, is understandable. Although his offi ce was in the workshop, he did not have to enter the
L I ST E N I N G TO M A C H I NE S 153 boilers. Neither is it surprising that a manufacturer was relaxed about getting hard of hearing: the noise was a sign of his business. What is remarkable, though, is that even the union leader, whose clear aim was to draw attention to the poor working conditions in Dutch industry, declared the use of wadding to be a mission impossible.
His observation about the need to stay in touch with one’s supervisor provides a straightforward explanation for this view, and one underlining the major signifi cance of the act of listening on the shop-fl oor. Similarly revealing is the committee member’s claim that boiler-boys had grown up into ‘vigorous’ workers, suggesting that the ability to stand noise was a sign of toughness. The remarks of both men point to the relevance of the symbolism of sound and cultures of listening for understanding why the use of earplugs was not unambiguously welcomed by workers.
Workers were questioning the need for ear protection for many decades to come.
The aim of this paper is, then, to demonstrate the role of the cultural meaning of sound in the clash between the dramatisation of the industrial noise problem by experts, notably physicians, and the response to this dramatisation by shop-fl oor labourers. By focusing on pro-earplug campaigns in the Netherlands and Germany, I will illustrate what the sound of machines ‘said’ to both experts and laymen. By staging my account in the wider context of the Western history of industrial noise and noise abatement, I will also analyse the signifi cance of the cultural meaning of sound for the position of hearing protection among alternative industrial noise abatement strategies, such as quieting machines and masking noise with music.
In so doing, I make use of and hope also to contribute to two distinct strands of research in science and technology studies concerned with science and sound: studies focusing on sound in science, and those concentrating on the science of sound. The fi rst aims to understand the role of sound in science and technology development,3 a focus related to the rising area of research analysing the role of embodied practice, and thus the senses, in generating scientifi c knowledge.4 Works in the second tradition are cultural histories of the sciences of sound, such as acoustics and audiology, and their coevolution with public problems of noise.5 Both sorts of research need to be involved in answering my key question – areas of research that are, in turn, deeply indebted to the cultural history and anthropology of the senses.
The Chaos of Industrial Noise: Restoring Rhythm and Distracting Attention
To the cultural history and anthropology of the senses we owe our knowledge of the longstanding association between noise and chaos. In war, revolution and ritual, the irregular and extremely loud use of drums and bells usually expresses intimidation, change and chaos, whereas a restoration of rhythm stands for situations being in control.6 These are the kinds of cultural convention that are implied in what I have called ‘the symbolism of sound’. Such a symbolism of sound co-constitutes ‘the cultural meaning of sound’, yet this cultural meaning of sound encompasses, at least in my use of the phrase, more than symbolism. It also includes cultures, or practices, of listening – cultures that have changed over time, partly in response to the introduction of new audio technologies.7
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In line with age-old connotations of noise, the public problem of noise was initially – that is before the widespread introduction of instruments measuring the intensity and loudness of sound in the mid 1930s – often defi ned as a problem situated in the chaos of simultaneously perceived sounds and the absence of a univocal rhythm.
At the end of the 1920s, the Noise Commission of London for instance claimed that street noise was a much more serious problem than industrial noise, because street noise, unlike industrial noise, had no rhythm. This made the clatter of traffi c harder to adjust to than the cadence of industrial machines. Such diffi culty of habituating to the chaos of street noise created angry emotions and added to fatigue.8 Lack of rhythm thus made street noise more distressing than industrial noise.
Experts focusing on industrial noise, however, took quite a different stand.
Although work had once been rhythmical, the introduction of modern machines had brusquely unbalanced the sound of the shop-fl oor. The beat of the machine was more rapid and fi xed than human rhythms. Even worse, a standard workshop had not one, but a multitude of machines, with varying rhythms that, taken together, produced sonic chaos. Clearly, the experts’ experience of factory sounds departed from the anti-street noise activists’ ideas of industrial noise. Yet the arguments underpinning their positions were remarkably similar: rhythmic sound was the thing to strive for, whereas the absence of unambiguous rhythm – the most dangerous side of noise – was the situation to be avoided.
As early as 1913, Josephine Goldmark, chair of the Committee on the Legal Defense of Labor Laws of the US National Consumers’ League, was quite clear on the dangers of noise. Noise, she claimed, ‘not only distracts attention but necessitates a greater exertion of intensity or conscious application, thereby hastening the onset of fatigue of the attention.’ According to her description of the textile trade, some kinds of motor sewing machine
now carry 12 needles, others set almost 4000 stitches a minute. Let any observer enter a modern roaring, vibrating workroom where several hundred young women are gathered together, each at her marvelous machine, which automatically hems, tucks, cords, sews, seams together . . . Her attention cannot relax a second while the machine runs its deafening course . . . The roar of the machines is so great that one can hardly make oneself heard by shouting to the person who stands beside one.9
Investigations into the psychological and physiological effects of auditory stimuli on humans in the late 1910s, 20s and early 30s seemed to substantiate Goldmark’s straightforward statements on noise and fatigue. Experiments of the American John J. B. Morgan in 1916/7, for instance, focused on the effect of noise on subjects translating a code on a typewriter. ‘An increase in muscular tones, vocalization and marked changes in breathing disclosed that noise raised energy expenditure in order for the subjects to overcome the auditory distractions.’10 And the work of the industrial psychologist Donald A. Laird showed a faster breath and raised systolic blood pressure in response to unexpected noise, as well as ‘a lowering of effi ciency in action and mental processes when noise is introduced’.11
L I ST E N I N G TO M A C H I NE S 155 In the context of the Taylorisation of the West’s industrial life in the 1920s and 30s, suggestions of ineffi ciency in workers operating noisy machines clearly rang a bell. Enhancing employees’ effi ciency by restoring the sensation of rhythm on the shop-fl oor therefore became one of the strategies used to reduce the negative effects of noise. Playing the phonograph, the gramophone or the radio on the shop-fl oor was seen as a promising way of recreating such a rhythmic feel within the factory walls.
This strategy started out from the assumption that the rhythm of music facilitated effective performance. Initially, arguments for the signifi cance of musical rhythm for work were of a historical-anthropological nature. In 1896, the German historical and anthropological economist Karl Bücher claimed that the origins of work were to be found in the rhythmical character of physical labour. Since Naturvölker (primitive peoples) had a natural disinclination for work, but loved to dance, only rhythm could explain why people had learned to endure simple, fatiguing tasks to an extent beyond that needed for basic survival. From and intertwined with the lust- and fantasy-evoking rhythm of bodily movement, music had evolved to facilitate the performance of individual work and the synchronisation of the communal. Rhythm had thus raised the productivity of labour. Art and technology, now differentiated domains of life, had once been two sides of the same coin.12 As Goldmark put it:
Not the poetry of existence only, but all the daily offi ces of life – spinning, weaving, sowing the grain, harvesting, and the rest – inspired song and dance, their own rhythms. Even today innumerable survivals persist . . . In the midst of discordant city traffi c, workmen who are mending the pavements drive steel wedges with rhythmic shouts and rhythmic alternating blows of their sledges. They know, instinctively, that the rhythm makes the work easier.13
In contrast, the fast movements of modern machines, so Bücher asserted, produced a
‘confusing, deafening noise’ in which one could ‘hear’ but not ‘experience’ rhythm, thus evoking ‘merely a sense of frustration’.14 And, as Goldmark added: ‘Not only is the beat of the machine much more rapid and regular than the more elastic human rhythms; it is often wholly lost in the chaos of different rhythms of the various machines, belts, and pulleys in one workroom.’15 In the future, Bücher suggested, one might hopefully succeed in combining technology and art once more ‘into a higher rhythmical unity’.16
It is not immediately obvious what unity of art and technology Bücher had in mind. Yet Thomas Edison seemed in a sense to make his dreams come true. In 1915, Edison ‘used a programmed selection of phonographic music for factories to determine the extent to which it would mask hazardous drones and boost morale.
But the infant loudspeaker and transmission technology was still too weak’.17 The idea itself, however, continued to fascinate researchers from the fi eld of industrial psychology. The Infl uence of Music on Behavior, a Princeton doctoral thesis of 1926 by Charles M. Diserens, summarised practices already existing, such as the speeding up of typewriting with the help of music, as well as new experiments. The results of controlled laboratory studies on the effects of tones and tonalities on blood circulation and muscular force were far from clear-cut. Yet many other reports, often based on
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questionnaires, claimed simply that music in the workplace led to an increased rate of work, fewer errors, better temper and lower fatigue. Theoretically, Diserens claimed, these phenomena could be explained by saying that ‘by lending regularity to muscular reaction [rhythm] eliminates the strain of voluntary attention, and reduces fatigue. It is a conservative factor. Tone, on the other hand, lends force to muscular movements.’18
Numerous reports and studies followed those discussed by Diserens, both in the United States and Europe, and all claiming an increase in output under the infl uence of music.19 ‘It diverted the mind from the monotonous conditions of work, provided an attractive aim, made time seem to pass more quickly, and created a more cheerful attitude towards work’, one famous British study from the second half of the 1930s explained. It took some discussion, however, to decide what kind of music was most suited to the job. The quick rhythm of one-steps coincided with high output, yet made
‘the workers feel “lively and restless”’, and the rhythm of marches ‘clashed with some of the movements involved’ in factory work.20
According to a report published in 1938 by the Philips fi rm, the music should not be too sentimental since the daydreams of the factory girls were already leaning too much towards the sentimental and sexual. On the other hand, jazz didn’t fi t because of its ‘sudden variations in high and low tones’ and because of the ‘very pronounced rhythm’ that confl icted with the rhythm of work and led to ‘stammering’ of hands and feet.21 Similarly, the people behind the BBC programme Music While You Work explicitly banned ‘hot’ music with complex rhythms since such music created ‘a confusion of sound’.22
Precisely because of the rhythmic character of factory work, the music should be
‘more than rhythm’, a Dutch author stressed in 1950. ‘A clear, easily appealing melody should expound, as it were, the difference from the noise.’23 By all means music needed ‘to create order in the chaos of sound’,24 yet, as many authors claimed, one did not need to adjust the rhythm of the music to the rhythm of the machines.
Nor would employing fast music necessarily speed up work. Less than through tempo, music rather infl uenced the worker by claiming attention and affecting mood. The speed of work simply varied too much to be dependent on the tempo of the music.25 Moreover, both European and American studies found that the clatter of machines seemed to adjust to the rhythm of the music, and that even amidst terrifi c din, the music stood out.26 As pianist and music journalist Doron K. Antrim clarifi ed, ‘the ear tends to follow’ the agreeable ‘regular tonal pulsations’ of music and ‘to forget’ the irritating and fatiguing ‘irregular pulsations’ of noise.27 Even if the ‘hum’ and ‘shrieks’
of machines mixed with the sound of music, a Dutch commentator stated, the music still had a positive effect.28 Music of relatively high frequency, others explained, did not have to be very loud in order to be audible above the low-frequency noise produced by many machines.29
Many factory managers enthusiastically embraced music on the shop-fl oor, and so did most workers – judging by the published questionnaires and the success of radio programmes such as Music While You Work. Workers even introduced audio sets at work themselves.30 The managers aimed to restore the rhythm of work within a chaos of mechanical din, thus following a deeply rooted symbolism of sound which associated noise with chaos and rhythm with order. They also contributed to a culture of listening in which listening to the radio became increasingly combined with other
L I ST E N I N G TO M A C H I NE S 157 activities – something already quite common, so Susan Douglas has claimed for North America, by the 1930s.31 Yet playing music was not the only conceivable way of dealing with industrial noise. Reducing the noise of the machines themselves and providing workers with earplugs were two alternative options.
Turning a Deaf Ear to Industrial Hearing Loss
Ever since the Middle Ages, physicians have pointed out the potential damage noise can infl ict on the ear.32 The danger of sudden and traumatic deafness connected with gunpowder was being mentioned as early as the late sixteenth century, and coppersmiths and blacksmiths were among the fi rst groups of workers identifi ed as getting hard of hearing and deaf because of their professional activities. Particularly famous are Bernardino Ramazzini’s remarks on the coppersmiths of Venice in his Diseases of Workers of 1713:
. . . these workers . . . are engaged all day in hammering copper to make it ductile . . . From this quarter there rises such a terrible din, that only these workers have shops and homes there; all others fl ee from that highly disagreeable locality . . . [As a result] the ears are injured by that perpetual din, and in fact the whole head, inevitably, so that workers of this class become hard of hearing and, if they grow old at this work, completely deaf.33
From the 1830s onwards, studies on ‘blacksmiths’ disease’ and subsequently on artillerymen, sheet-iron workers, miners, coppersmiths, coopers, millers, metal-workers, locksmiths, boilermakers and railway workers appeared in European and American medical journals.34 Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ever new groups, such as telephone-switchboard operators, were added.
By 1938, ‘over 560 occupations’ had been classifi ed by the Detroit Health Department as ‘noisy occupations’.35
Quieting the machines that made these occupations noisy may seem to be a logical response to the problem of hearing loss. Yet, as medical historian Allard Dembe has illustrated for the United States, when such noise control was introduced it was probably not because of the danger of noise-induced hearing loss, but out of considerations of effi ciency – as had been the rationale behind the use of music on the shop-fl oor. Around 1900, engineers began with the reduction of noise from production equipment since they realised that ‘noisy machinery’ could be ‘an indication of mechanical ineffi ciency that ultimately can result in lower productivity and increased cost’.36 Somewhat later, sound deadening foundations that reduced the vibration of machines, as well as the exclusion of machinery noise from particular areas through insulation, came to be discussed and introduced.37 Quieting machines by suppressing the causes of noise at source was usually seen as the most effective approach. This focused on oiling moving parts, fi xing defective ones, improving gearing, balancing machinery, reducing vibration and resonance caused by magnetic pulsation, and preventing sudden discontinuities in the motion of machines.38
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Wearing ‘personal protective devices in or around the ears to control exposure
Wearing ‘personal protective devices in or around the ears to control exposure