Music









A few years back in a bookshop in Rye, (pretty much the only place of interest in the antique shop paradise that is Rye), I stumbled across a book called 'Echoes from the Sky' by Richard N Scarth concerning the history of acoustic sound mirrors that were built along the coast between 1916 and the 1930's.

Fenced off for decades and revered by the local folk as 'listening ears', it's tempting to believe they hid the secrets of sinister military experiments using sonic death rays, but it transpires that they are in fact a forerunner of Radar.

Pioneered by the obsessive Dr W.S. Tucker of the Royal Engineers, the concrete sound mirrors were intended to provide early warning of incoming enemy aeroplanes and airships about to attack coastal towns.

But with the development of faster aircraft and the increasing racket from the holiday resort down the road, the effectiveness of the mirrors twindled as an aircraft would be within sight by the time it had been located. The last nail was finally driven into the coffin of this uniquely English folly by the evolution of radar systems, so by 1934 they had tragically became obsolete.

LINK

These mirrors are interesting things.

I was at a training college that had a students bar. The roof had a skylight in the centre of the room, and the designers had inadvertantly created an accoustic mirror. The result was that if you sat underneath the skylight, you would occasionaly get scraps of conversation or sounds from around the room. It was most disconcerting, as you would suddenly hear a burst of conversation - or the rustling of a crisp packet - and it would seem as though the sounds where coming from about 5-6cm from your ear, and slightly behind you.

The effect was highly intermittent, and relied on both you - and the person who's conversation you where hearing - being in very precise positions. As a consequence, it was useless for eavesdropping: the 'mirror' effect would phase in for a few seconds, and then dissolve again.

Meow Purr.