A Russian-language page on the Autogena proposal for modern cross-Channel sound mirrors, with some rather familiar looking photos. “слушающие уши” seems to be listening ear, and “звуковые зеркала” is sound wall. Google translates the title of the article as “Stone ears teach people to shout through the English Channel”.
The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten?
Paul Prior has supplied an old photograph, possibly taken circa 1969-70, showing the sound mirror at Warden Point near Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey.
The picture was taken before the cliffs were eroded so far that the mirror fell onto the beach below, which is thought to have happened in about 1978-79.
The mirror is on the extreme left of the picture. The design is similar to the mirrors at Selsey and in the northeast, suggesting a First World War date for its construction.
German musicians Blank & Jones used the Denge sound mirrors in the video for their song A Forest, which can be viewed on YouTube.
Hurrah, I’ve got a [presumably sound] mirror 419 scam e-mail via the website. I’m sorely tempted to try to sell “Mr Curtis Taylor” a 200 foot mirror, slightly used.
Hello,
Am Mr.Curtis Taylor and will like to place an order regarding some Mirrors from your company to a firm work in Ghana. I will appreciate you email me back with the sizes that you have instock as well as their price ranges and also your terms of payments as well.I will like to be one of your honest customer’s and hope you answer to my request ASAP.Dont hesitate to email me back.Thank you very much and waiting for your prompt responds.Best Regards,
Mr.Curtis Taylor.
Paul Sheersmith went to Hythe in Kent on May 7, and took these photos of the sound mirror there.
Another correspondent writes with news of about a recent trip to the Hythe sound mirror:
I intended to go for a walk by the military canal near Hythe today, but was diverted by the sight of the mirror still standing above the Pennypot estate - so decided to clamber up there.
Very overgrown near the top - could not walk around the back as the stinging nettles were too high. However fascinating to see - so have been hunting for some more information about them this evening. Remember seeing something on ‘Coast‘ sometime ago.
Thanks for the info and the photos - unfortunately we did not have the camera with us today which is most unusual.
Probably not, concludes Brett Holman in a posting on his Airminded blog entitled The widening margin. It is an interesting analysis by someone doing a PhD at the University of Melbourne, examining the impact of airpower propaganda on the British people between 1908 and 1939
. The whole site looks worth a poke around.
Lastly, here’s a counterfactual which I’ve long wondered about. Between 1933 and 1935, the Air Ministry put a fair amount of effort into researching the feasibility of using acoustic mirrors as a comprehensive early warning system. The acoustic mirrors were, mostly, concrete hemispheric dishes for focusing sound, which had been used as early as 1916. The biggest ones, at Dungeness in Kent and Maghtab in Malta, were 200 feet long curved walls. Land was actually purchased along the Thames Estuary for the beginnings of a national acoustic mirror system, but work never started because radar came along. But if it hadn’t, then in 1940 Fighter Command might have relied upon a network of these acoustic mirrors all along the coast. How useful would they have been?
The experimental mirrors had a maximum detection range of 22 miles (on very windy days it was a lot less). I’ll be generous and call it 25 miles, which is then added to the 50 miles from the coast to London for a total distance of 75 miles. The Thames Estuary acoustic mirrors probably would have come online in 1936, and so again I’ll be generous, and assume that London at least would have a working early warning system from that year.
Taking all this into account, the results can be seen above [article has a graphic]. And sadly the acoustic mirrors wouldn’t have made much difference — a margin of only about 10 minutes, not much improved on the 5 minutes with no warning system. Of course, even a few minutes’ extra warning was worth having, but the Air Ministry was right to terminate development of the acoustic mirror network in order to concentrate on the far more promising radar.
Read Holman’s full article (and some warnings about the assumptions made).
A web forum with discussion of RAF sound reflectors and the use of sound in early warning systems.
There is an interesting article about Electronic Warfare in WW1 on the Landships website, in which Robert Robinson describes a somewhat obscure aspect of the Great War.
There is a common misconception that electronic warfare began with the Second World War but, even if it was not so labelled, it played a significant part in the First World War at both a strategic and a tactical level.
Fans of sound mirrors might be interested in the tale of how the Eiffel Tower was used to confuse Zeppelins.
“Deputy Dog” writes about The forgotten sound mirrors
, with some pictures.
A correspondent e-mails to say that he first discovered the sound mirrors when he saw pictures on the CD booklet/cover art of a Bass Communion album. They are great images, done by Carl Glover of Aleph Studios
, showing a view up the 200 foot mirror at Denge.
Bass Communion is a project by Steven Wilson, leader of the band Porcupine Tree. According to the Bass Communion website, it specialises in recordings in an ambient and/or electronic vein, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. Most of the pieces are experiments in texture made from processing recordings of real instruments and field recordings.
The March 2003 album Bass Communion (remixed) contains Reconstructions and recycling of Bass Communion music by artists from the experimental, electronic and ambient music scenes
.
