"Glanz und Elend der Kunstkopf-Stereophonie": Eine technik- und medienarchäologische Ausgrabung

in Fickers, Andreas; Haude, Rüdiger; Krebs, Stefan (Eds.) et al Jeux sans Frontières? - Grenzgänge der Geschichtswissenschaft (2017)

Review: Fondation Bassin Minier (Hg.) (2015). Mutations: Mémoires et Perspectives du Bassin Minier. Esch/Alzette: C.A. Press

in Hemecht : Zeitschrift für Luxemburger Geschichte = Revue d'Histoire Luxembourgeoise (2017), 69(3/4), 472-474

Die Erfindung der automobilen Stille: eine kurze Geschichte des Automobil-Sounddesigns

in Pohle, Frank; Kroll, Myriam (Eds.) Vom fauchenden Fafnir zum Fahrzeug der Zukunft – Aachen und das Auto (2016)

In den 1990er-Jahren haben zahlreiche US-amerikanische und europäische Automobilhersteller eine Reihe von Fernsehspots veröffentlicht, die sich ausschließlich dem Sound ihrer Wagen widmen. Insbesondere ... [more ▼]

In den 1990er-Jahren haben zahlreiche US-amerikanische und europäische Automobilhersteller eine Reihe von Fernsehspots veröffentlicht, die sich ausschließlich dem Sound ihrer Wagen widmen. Insbesondere die akustische Stille im Wageninneren wurde als eine herausragende Eigenschaft beworben: Mit dem Zufallen der Wagentür würden gleichsam Hektik und Lärm des Alltags ausgeschlossen, weshalb der genervte Autofahrer oder die gestresste Autofahrerin im Auto endlich zur Ruhe kommen könne. So lautete zumindest unisono das Reklameversprechen. Diese widersprüchlich anmutende Botschaft – ist doch die vorherrschende Lärmursache im städtischen Bereich gerade das fahrende Automobil, das hier als stiller Zufluchtsraum dargestellt wird – ist allerdings keineswegs neu. Vielmehr beschäftigen sich Automobilingenieure und Automobiljournalisten bereits seit rund 100 Jahren mit der klanglichen Gestaltung des Automobils: speziell mit der Klangkulisse des Wageninneren. Ein erster Blick in alte Automobilzeitschriften zeigt, dass bereits in den 1920er-Jahren die automobile Stille ein von den Automobilherstellern gerne gepriesenes Qualitätsmerkmal ihrer Fahrzeuge war. Ein zweiter Blick zeigt zudem, dass automobile Stille sogar im Plural diskutiert wurde, da zeitgenössisch drei verschiedene Arten unterschieden wurden: mechanische Stille, komfortable Stille und aristokratische Stille. Die Herausbildung und Bedeutung dieser drei Arten automobiler Stille stehen im Mittelpunkt der folgenden Ausführungen. [less ▲]

Review: Wolfgang König (2014). Der Gelehrte und der Manager. Franz Reuleaux (1829-1905) und Alois Riedler (1850-1936) in Technik, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag

in Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (2015), 21

Sound and Safe : A History of Listening Behind the Wheel

Book published by Oxford University Press (2014)

Do you enjoy listening to music while driving? Do you find radio traffic information indispensable? Do you appreciate the moments of your drive in which you can listen to or sing along with whatever you ... [more ▼]

Do you enjoy listening to music while driving? Do you find radio traffic information indispensable? Do you appreciate the moments of your drive in which you can listen to or sing along with whatever you like? This book shows how we created auditory privacy in cars, making them feel sound and safe, even though automobiles were highly noisy things at the beginning of the twentieth century. It explains how engineers in the automotive industry found pride in making car engines quieter once they realized that noise stood for inefficiency. It follows them as they struggle against sounds audible within the car after the automobile had become a closed vehicle. It tells how noise-induced fatigue became an issue once the car became a mass means for touring across the country. It unravels the initial societal concerns about the dangers of car radio and what it did to drivers' attention span. It explores how car drivers listened to their cars' engines to diagnose car problems, and appreciated radio traffic information for avoiding traffic jams. And it suggests that their disdain for the ever-expanding number of roadside noise barriers made them long for new forms of in-car audio entertainment. This book also allows you to peep behind the scenes of international standardization committees and automotive test benches. What did and does the automotive industry to secure the sounds characteristic for their makes? Drawing on archives, interviews, beautiful automotive ads, and literature from the fields of cultural history, science and technology studies, sound and sensory studies, this book unveils the history of an everyday phenomenon. It is about the sounds of car engines, tires, wipers, blinkers, warning signals, in-car audio systems and, ultimately, about how we became used to listen while driving. [less ▲]

“Dial Gauge versus Senses 1 - 0” : German Auto Mechanics and the Introduction of New Diagnostic Equipment, 1950–1980

in Technology and Culture (2014), 55(2), 354-389

Automobile sounds contain information on the technical state of the car; these sounds can be used to monitor the car while driving, and, in case of a flaw, to diagnose its source. For German car mechanics ... [more ▼]

Automobile sounds contain information on the technical state of the car; these sounds can be used to monitor the car while driving, and, in case of a flaw, to diagnose its source. For German car mechanics, listening to car sounds was, since the institutionalization of the trade in the 1930s, a legitimate entrance to diagnostic knowledge. The introduction of new diagnostic equipment in the 1950s contested the epistemic status of diagnostic listening. Manufacturers and trade authors claimed that these new testing instruments alone gave objective measurements, whereas old-fashioned bodily practices like diagnostic listening were too subjective and thus insufficient for automobile diagnostics. However, contesting the status of sensory diagnosis implicated the contestation of the car mechanics’ socio- technical position. This is why German mechanics did not embrace diagnostic technology until the 1980s and continued to deploy their sensory skills when diagnosing malfunctions. [less ▲]

The Art of Stethoscope Use: Diagnostic Listening Practices of Medical Physicians and “Auto Doctors”

in Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (2014), 20(2), 92-114

Since the early years of the trade, car mechanics were often referred to as ‘auto-doctors’, a figuration most readily discernible in the field’s advertisements and trade journals. This linking of car ... [more ▼]

Since the early years of the trade, car mechanics were often referred to as ‘auto-doctors’, a figuration most readily discernible in the field’s advertisements and trade journals. This linking of car repair craft skills to the clinical expertise of medical physicians is often suggested through depiction of this ‘auto-doctor’ using a stethoscope. Beyond being emblematic of a doctor’s vocation, referencing this tool underlines a tradition common to both professions: namely, of training the expert’s senses to detect and analyse problems in cars and human bodies by their sounds. However with the advent of more visual forms of diagnosis (e.g., x-rays) in the 1950s and 1960s, medical auscultation’s real potential was more and more frequently put into question. Roughly at the same time, similar shifts from sonic to visual means of diagnosis (e.g., oscilloscopes) occurred in the car mechanics trade. This article explores connections between the two very different fields of medical diagnosis and car repair through an investigation of their ‘sonic skills’ (the listening skills and other skills needed to employ the tools for listening). This comparison is developed first through delineating the bodily, cognitive and socio-technical aspects of diagnostic listening, for which examining different teaching strategies for learning such techniques in both fields are revelatory. We examine each technique’s key dispositions and contexts of enactment, including uses of the stethoscope and other tools, particular listening protocols and bodily postures and ways of sharing and communicating about perceived acoustic information within professional settings. Finally, we explore how listening is equally engaged in the construction of professional identities, including relationships between experts and non-experts. [less ▲]

Listening to the Sounding Objects of the Past : The Case of the Car

in Franinovic, Karmen; Serafin, Stefania (Eds.) Sonic Interaction Design (2013)

This chapter will provide historical context for sonic interaction design by writing a history of sounding objects with a particular focus on the 20th century, the West, and the history of the car as a ... [more ▼]

This chapter will provide historical context for sonic interaction design by writing a history of sounding objects with a particular focus on the 20th century, the West, and the history of the car as a sounding object. The chapter’s introduction will clarify why it is useful to have historical knowledge of the everyday sounding objects of the past and the auditory cultures in which they functioned. Such historical knowledge will help to enhance the designers’ awareness of the changing cultural meanings and evaluations of particular sounds, and the potential differences in the response to such sounds. We will illustrate this by starting with an early twentieth century description of the many sounds of the car, and our contemporary lack of understanding of these sounds: they do not speak to us in the same way as they spoke to the historical author of the description. In addition, this chapter helps to historicize and situate the rise of sonic design itself. What do we know about the sounding objects of the past? Our second section will provide an overview of the historical literature on sounding objects in the ages before the 20th century. It sketches the different approaches to this history, such as those from acoustic ecology, socio-economic and environmental history, history of the senses, cultural history, cultural geography and cultural studies, musicology, media studies, history of medicine, and science and technology studies. Pending on the perspectives behind these approaches, the focus in such work is either on the rise and fall of particular sounds as a consequence of new processes of production and consumption; the changing cultural hierarchy of the senses; the complex symbolic meanings of sound, silence and noise; cultures of musical performance and listening; the use of recording and amplification technologies; or the contributions of science and medicine to the understanding of sounding objects. At the end of this section, we will explain which of these traditions are most useful to us in understanding how sounding objects (and cars as sounding objects in particular) have been sources of information, centerpieces of artistic veneration, occasions for noise control, and facilitators of acoustic privacy. Subsequently, the third section will focus on how sounding objects, notably the sounds of the automobile engine, have been sources of information in the 20th century. This section will show how engineers, car mechanics and drivers struggled with making sense of what the engine sounds “said.” Highly important in this section is to show how not only the sounds themselves changed, but also the meaning of these sounds and the vocabulary to describe them. Linked to the difficult verbalization of car sound experiences, the section will analyze the distinction between who was allowed to speak about and interpret these sounds, and who was not. As an example we’ll look at the acoustic detection of engine malfunctions. In order to describe the symbolic struggle between car experts and lay motorists on who is the real car sound expert, this section will use both secondary literature and primary sources, such as trade journals, special interest journals for drivers, car manuals and technical handbooks. As long as we have recorded history, the sounding objects of everyday life have been used as musical instruments, most often for drumming. Yet, in the 20th century, the sounds and recorded sounds of mundane objects and machines even became centerpieces of aesthetic celebration and the basic elements of composition. The fourth section of our chapter only shortly reviews the well-known history of the Futurist music, musique concrète, the rise of electronic music and sound art. The larger part of this section will be devoted to how and why today’s sound artists, notably in the Netherlands, use everyday sounding objects in their compositions, and which strategies they deploy to make these sounds artistically interesting. Our discussion of their views will be based on a set of interviews with sound artists, and gives yet another twist on how sounding objects can speak to people. Despite the artistic relevance of the experiments with sounding objects in contemporary music, many members of concert hall audiences still consider such music “noise”. This brings us, in our fifth section, to the history of sounding objects as sources of noise, and more specifically to the history of traffic noise. This section will be largely based on Bijsterveld’s “Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture and Public Problems on Noise in the Twentieth Century” (MIT Press, 2008). It shows how traffic sound in Western cities became unwanted sound, how noise changed from being a chaos of sounds to a high level of sound energy, and how noise control started. The history of noise control will provide a natural bridge to the topic of our sixth section: the role of sounding objects in enabling acoustic privacy. By drawing on recent literature by Jonathan Sterne, Heike Weber and others on the history of headphone and mobile listening, work by Karin Bijsterveld on the rise of the car as acoustic cocoon (including the car radio), and primary sources on making the car interior a quieter space, this section clarifies how the car is not only a sounding object that emits sounds, yet also a sounding object that insulates drivers from environmental sound and has given them control over the recorded sounds they want to listen to. In this sense driving your encapsulated music chamber repeals social restrictions, and thus facilitates a listening experience which can’t be easily achieved at home. This has made the car into a mobile listening booth or acoustic cocoon, enhancing the kinesthetic experience of the car’s acceleration and movement. This section will underline, however, that it is never solely the technology that creates cultural practices such as acoustic cocooning in the car. Instead, consumers had and have to appropriate new audio technologies in existing practices, and may use new sounding objects in unexpected ways. Moreover, where listening to recorded sound crosses the boundaries between private and public space, it will highly probably become the subject of public debate. In our conclusions, we will return to the issue of the relevance of historical knowledge on sounding objects for sonic interaction design today, and will make the claims in our introduction more specific with help of the historical examples discussed in the middle sections of the chapter. [less ▲]

Von Motorkonzerten und aristokratischer Stille : die Einführung der geschlossenen Automobilkarosserie in Frankreich und Deutschland, 1919–1939

in Gleitsmann, Rolf-Jürgen; Wittmann, Jürgen (Eds.) Innovationskulturen um das Automobil : Von gestern bis morgen (2013)

Die rasche Verbreitung der geschlossenen Automobilkarosserie stellt in der Technik- und Kulturgeschichte des Automobils eine tiefgreifende Zäsur dar. Noch zu Beginn der 1920er Jahre dominierte der offene ... [more ▼]

Die rasche Verbreitung der geschlossenen Automobilkarosserie stellt in der Technik- und Kulturgeschichte des Automobils eine tiefgreifende Zäsur dar. Noch zu Beginn der 1920er Jahre dominierte der offene Wagen die Automobilmärkte auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks, wurde aber innerhalb einer halben Dekade fast vollständig von der geschlossenen Karosserie verdrängt. Den Beginn machten um 1925 die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, die europäischen Automobilnationen folgten wenige Jahre später. Die Einführung der geschlossenen (Ganzstahl-)Karosserie war zunächst ein zentraler Eckstein der automobilen Massenherstellung, darüber hinaus veränderte sie aber auch die sinnliche, insbesondere die akustische Erfahrung des einfachen Automobilisten. (Lauf-)Ruhe wurde zu einem wichtigen neuen Qualitätsmerkmal und Automobilingenieure versuchten dementsprechend, das Automobil akustisch zu zähmen. Laute Geräusche wurden nun im automobiltechnischen Diskurs als mechanische Ineffizienz, als Kraftvergeudung, interpretiert. Damit wurde der geräuschlose Gang des Motors zum erstrebenswerten Ziel an sich. Auch die Karosserie wurde durch verbesserte Federung und Schallisolierung konstruktiv beruhigt. Die neue Stille im geschlossenen Innenraum erhielt insbesondere in der Werbung die Zuschreibung von Luxus und Vornehmheit – das leise Automobil wurde so zum bürgerlichen Distinktionsmittel. Der Vortrag zeichnet die Einführung der geschlossenen Karosserie in Frankreich und Deutschland und den damit verbundenen (sensorischen) Wandel der Fahrerfahrung nach. [less ▲]

“Notschrei eines Automobilisten” oder die Herausbildung des Kfz-Handwerks in Deutschland

in Technikgeschichte (2012), 79(3), 185206

Der folgende Beitrag beschreibt die Entwicklung des deutschen Kfz-Gewerbes in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Dazu untersucht er die soziale Praxis des Autoreparierens nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg und insbesondere ... [more ▼]

Der folgende Beitrag beschreibt die Entwicklung des deutschen Kfz-Gewerbes in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Dazu untersucht er die soziale Praxis des Autoreparierens nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg und insbesondere die Herausbildung des selbständigen Kfz-Handwerks in den 1930er Jahren. Von besonderem Interesse ist dabei das spannungsgeladene Verhältnis zwischen Automobilbesitzern und Mechanikern, sowie die konfliktreiche Beziehung zwischen spezialisierten Kfz-Mechanikern und den sogenannten Ad-hoc-Mechanikern. Erkenntnisleitendes Interesse ist dabei die Frage, wie sich im Untersuchungszeitraum die gesellschaftliche Zuschreibung von Reparaturkompetenz wandelte. Kernthese ist, dass sich in den 1930er Jahren die Regeln des Reparierens wandelten. Während die bürgerlichen Selbstfahrer nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg zunächst als dominante Akteure auftraten, die erfolgreich umfassende Fahrkompetenzen unter Einschluss des Reparierens für sich reklamierten, erlangten mit der Professionalisierung des Kfz-Handwerks die Kfz-Meister eine neue Autoritätsstellung. Ihre neue Konsekrationsmacht nutzten sie, um sowohl den Ad-hoc-Mechanikern als auch den Automobilisten ihre Reparaturkompetenz abzusprechen und beide Gruppen von der sozialen Praxis des Reparierens auszuschließen. [less ▲]