Natural Science Forum / Physics / Acoustics / February 2005

Investigated/proposed/invented?/etc. by Sir Francis Bacon in the 16th
century. More information can be found in John Kopec's book "The
Sabines at Riverbank":

http://asa.aip.org/publications.html#pub32

Summary: The design was written in a cipher - something Bacon was
inclined to do a lot of. Around the beginning of the 20th centurey,
Colonel Fabyan - a rich, rather eccentric Illinoisan (sp?) - was
fascinated by Bacon's work. He wanted the design decoded and the device
built. Once he had the cipher experts working on the code, he needed an
acoustics expert to figure out how it might possibly be built and work.
Enter Wallace Clement Sabine.
Spoiler: Bacon's device never did work. But without it, we would never
have had Riverbank Acoustical Labs!!! As a curiosity/piece of history,
RAL still has the original device in their museum.

Best regards,

Jeff D. Szymanski
Chief Acoustical Engineer
Auralex Acoustics, Inc.