NOISY CITIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1932, Page 10

NOISY CITIES

Many experiments have been, made, particularly in American cities, to measure noise. This is not done as one might suppose from other American precedents as a preliminary to organising a campaign for, "bigger and better noises" or a "greater noise week," but so that some check may be put upon the more nerve-wracking disturbances. A Paris airman, however, has measured the noise of the French capital in a novel way and with apparently no other aim than that of confirming the Paris title to be one of the noisiest cities in the world. The airman circled over Paris for half an hour in a glider at a height of 4000 feet. There he clearly heard an incessant humming, the hooting of motor-cars, the whistling of trains, the barking of dogs, and sometimes voices. With this performance in mind it would appear impossible to rise above the noise of the city. The silence of the heights is an illusion if those heights are above the town. To leave the noise behind one must do as hitherto and travel far on the earth. Even that becomes more difficult when noises have the habit of following.