The Tizard Mission

Posted on 14 March 2011 by Andrew Grantham

… visual detection was often hampered by the island nation’s overcast skies, and the technological means of spotting aircraft were primitive at best. One scheme involved a massive concrete “sound mirror” that picked up the noise of an approaching engine—unfortunately, though, the device wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between the invading Luftwaffe and a passing British lorry. A technological breakthrough was needed….

Source: Review of “The Tizard Mission” by Stephen Phelps at the Wall Street Journal, 2011-03-12

Amusingly, alongside the review is a link to an article Opinion: Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl by a William Tucker. Obviously this isn’t the William S Tucker who was involved in the development of sound ranging!

Interesting mirror at Interesting Times

Posted on 18 February 2011 by Andrew Grantham

Sound effects is a 20 August 2010 posting about the Kilnsea sound mirror at Mike Higginbottom’s Interesting Times website.

Among the First World War fortifications that protected eastern England from the German threat is a curious lump of concrete in a field north-west of the Godwin Battery on the coast at Kilnsea on the way to Spurn Point. This enigmatic piece of concrete is an acoustic mirror …

Sound mirrors in Liverpool Anglican cathedral

Posted on 9 February 2011 by Andrew Grantham

Sounding Out Liverpool
Artist: Matthew Sansom
Location: St James’ Mount, Anglican Cathedral

Giant ‘sound mirrors’ tempt viewers to listen to the city through the artwork, which amplifies the continual flowing soundscape of the city and its inhabitants.

This artwork invites you to entertain and play, bounce your own stories, jokes or poems off the sound mirror, or recite extracts from the films, books and entertainers of Liverpool, whose words are etched on the surrounding ground.

It is open 14th-18th February 2011 (11.00-3.00pm) and 21st–25th February 2011 (11.00-3.00pm).

Construction of the Abbot’s Cliff mirror

Posted on 18 January 2011 by Andrew Grantham

Pete Graves e-mails to say the Abbot’s Cliff sound mirror was constructed by Lewis Brothers, Builders, of Dover. My father-in-law was apprenticed to Lewis’s in 1926 as a carpenter, and he worked on the wooden form-work around which the concrete for the mirror was ‘cast’. My father-in-law never visited the site and neither have my wife and I!”

Sound mirrors and the soniferous aether

Posted on 20 December 2010 by Andrew Grantham

Hide and Seek Gallery “recently hung out with Quinn Gomez-Heitzeberg at the group show titled “Air” at the Corridor 2122 Gallery“, in Fresno, California. This show includes “Proposal for a Municipal Sound Mirror, 2001”, in wood, paper and model cars.

Just as sound travels as vibrations in air and light through the lumiferous aether, the sounds of phasma or “auditory ghosts” are conducted through the soniferous aether. A reflector constructed from resonant materials at a large enough scale may access these sounds when focused on an appropriate site.
more…

So now we know.

A fossilised Jodrell Bank?

Posted on 8 December 2010 by Andrew Grantham

Between Channels: Edwardian gentlemen, muffled against the cold, are sat in the shelter of their giant concrete discs grimly waiting for the whisper of Zeppelins or Gothas which will bring down destruction on Holderness or Hythe …. a fossilised Jodderel bank, will always arouse the hauntological curiousity in me.

The Séance at Hob’s Lane by Drew Mulholland/Mount Vernon Arts Lab, seems to be another album with the Denge mirrors on the cover.

Listing campaign in 1993

Posted on 17 October 2010 by Andrew Grantham

“Listing of sound mirrors urged: Oliver Gillie reports on the pre-radar detection devices that enthusiasts want to see preserved” from the Independent on 3 July 1993.

HUGE CONCRETE sound mirrors used before the days of radar to listen for the approach of hostile aircraft should be scheduled as national monuments, according to enthusiasts. Already several have been demolished …

Denge sound mirrors in 1998

Posted on 10 October 2010 by Andrew Grantham

Anyway I visited the mirrors to take some photos a few times around 1997 and 1998. At the time they were almost totally forgotten about and in the middle of an active gravel pit. The large 200 foot sound wall was very close to falling into the pit and disappearing forever. It was such a strange an eerie place…[More…]

Dungeness walk

Posted on 9 September 2010 by Andrew Grantham

Sound and Vision at Walking Class Hero: These other worldy concrete structures are the remains of part of an acoustic early warning system that was designed to detect engine sounds from approaching aircraft. ‘Staccato signals of constant information‘ as Paul Simon sings from another time

Another very popular walk, it seems: I stopped estimating at 150.

Listening Vessels at the San Francisco Exploratorium

Posted on 15 August 2010 by Andrew Grantham

Listening Vessels consists of two large parabolic reflectors set at least 50 feet apart which act as mirrors to reflect sound from one to the other. Two people sit opposite each other at approximately the focal point for each reflector, so that the sound coming from each reflector is focused at this point, allowing each visitor to clearly hear the other’s voice, even at a very low decibel in spite of the distance separating the vessels.
Source: The Exploratorium

Sound Mirrors

Author: Andrew Grantham