WOMEN'S ISSUES
Episode #50
OBD: Dec-64
TRT: 60 min
Description:
This month’s AT ISSUE surveys the growing number and variety of unpleasant sounds that are plaguing the American public today. Through narration, still photographs, film footage, sound recordings, and interviews with experts, the program views America’s acute noise problem, its many causes, the physiological effects, and the steps being taken to curtail it.
THE NOISE-MAKERS lays much of the responsibility for the country’s increased noise level on modern advances in technology (e.g. jet airplanes), the population increase resulting in new, but “thin-walled” apartment construction, the proliferation of noisy household appliances (e.g. vacuum cleaners, dishwashers), and the growth of the trucking industry and automobile traffic. According to Dr. Samuel Rosen, a prominent New York ear surgeon who appears on the program, this rising noise level is responsible for a great increase in the loss of hearing.
The program looks at areas in America where the effects of noise have had their greatest impact. For instance, in the southern part of San Francisco viewers see houses that have been literally shaken to pieces by the noise of jet airplanes flying overhead. A renting agent in New York City describes the complaints of tenants concerning the flimsy protection modern apartment dwellings afford them against outside noise. New York City Housing Commissioner, Harold Birns leads substance to these claims by charging that apartments offer little refuge against “the alien contraptions which incessantly seek to attack and destroy man’s nervous system.”
The suburbs, once considered the hub of peace and quiet, have not been spared from the growing profusion of noise. According to a “noise” consultant, power mowers, chain saws, garbage trucks, road construction work, and commercial trucking have made the country’s suburbs sound almost as noisy as some of its big cities.
Efforts are being made to reduce the noise level. Leo Beranek of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, an acoustical consultant firm, describes how noise is transmitted, the various devices such as noise cushions that can be employed to reduce it, and the relative costs of such devices. Professor Cyril Harris of Columbia University, the president of the American Acoustical Association, points out that economics is the basis of the issue, and that noise can be suppressed effectively if dealt with at the source. However, he also notes that the technical problems are great and the constitutional restrictions, perhaps, even greater.
AT ISSUE: NOISE-MAKERS also examine the legal restriction and their degree of enforcement in handling the noise problem. Focused on are New York and California laws which regulate the degree of noise permissible in industry, the provisions regarding noise that are currently being written in New York City’s building code, and the successful efforts of Memphis, Tennessee’s police and traffic departments to make that city one of the quietest in the nation. However, the overall picture shows that the number of anti-noise laws is inadequate, and the enforcement of those in effect is at best, spotty.
Wolf von Eckart, architectural critic for The Washington Post, sums up the cultural implications of noise in America by concluding that it is “detrimental to the art of living.”
AT ISSUE: THE NOISE-MAKERS
A 1964 production of National Educational Television
Executive producer: Alvin Perlmutter
Producer: Andrew Stern
Associate producer: Lois Shaw
Writer: John O’Toole
OBD: Dec-64
TRT: 60 min
Description:
This month’s AT ISSUE surveys the growing number and variety of unpleasant sounds that are plaguing the American public today. Through narration, still photographs, film footage, sound recordings, and interviews with experts, the program views America’s acute noise problem, its many causes, the physiological effects, and the steps being taken to curtail it.
THE NOISE-MAKERS lays much of the responsibility for the country’s increased noise level on modern advances in technology (e.g. jet airplanes), the population increase resulting in new, but “thin-walled” apartment construction, the proliferation of noisy household appliances (e.g. vacuum cleaners, dishwashers), and the growth of the trucking industry and automobile traffic. According to Dr. Samuel Rosen, a prominent New York ear surgeon who appears on the program, this rising noise level is responsible for a great increase in the loss of hearing.
The program looks at areas in America where the effects of noise have had their greatest impact. For instance, in the southern part of San Francisco viewers see houses that have been literally shaken to pieces by the noise of jet airplanes flying overhead. A renting agent in New York City describes the complaints of tenants concerning the flimsy protection modern apartment dwellings afford them against outside noise. New York City Housing Commissioner, Harold Birns leads substance to these claims by charging that apartments offer little refuge against “the alien contraptions which incessantly seek to attack and destroy man’s nervous system.”
The suburbs, once considered the hub of peace and quiet, have not been spared from the growing profusion of noise. According to a “noise” consultant, power mowers, chain saws, garbage trucks, road construction work, and commercial trucking have made the country’s suburbs sound almost as noisy as some of its big cities.
Efforts are being made to reduce the noise level. Leo Beranek of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, an acoustical consultant firm, describes how noise is transmitted, the various devices such as noise cushions that can be employed to reduce it, and the relative costs of such devices. Professor Cyril Harris of Columbia University, the president of the American Acoustical Association, points out that economics is the basis of the issue, and that noise can be suppressed effectively if dealt with at the source. However, he also notes that the technical problems are great and the constitutional restrictions, perhaps, even greater.
AT ISSUE: NOISE-MAKERS also examine the legal restriction and their degree of enforcement in handling the noise problem. Focused on are New York and California laws which regulate the degree of noise permissible in industry, the provisions regarding noise that are currently being written in New York City’s building code, and the successful efforts of Memphis, Tennessee’s police and traffic departments to make that city one of the quietest in the nation. However, the overall picture shows that the number of anti-noise laws is inadequate, and the enforcement of those in effect is at best, spotty.
Wolf von Eckart, architectural critic for The Washington Post, sums up the cultural implications of noise in America by concluding that it is “detrimental to the art of living.”
AT ISSUE: THE NOISE-MAKERS
A 1964 production of National Educational Television
Executive producer: Alvin Perlmutter
Producer: Andrew Stern
Associate producer: Lois Shaw
Writer: John O’Toole
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