Telephone technology enabled precise measurement of sound perception

Evidence

Although Wundt was able to control the sound intensity in his experiments, the introduction of telephone receivers and sound level meters made measurements of the perception of sound intensity more feasible. Alexander Graham Bell’s invention formed the basis of the technology that allows us to precisely and accurately control and manipulate sound today. Along with Western Electric, its precursor company, Bell Telephone Labs (commonly called Bell Labs), focused on the research and development of telephone-associated equipment. The contributions of Bell Labs after its formation in 1925, in particular, have been integral to the fields of psychoacoustics and audiology. Much of their work involved the development of technologies that are now used to assess and to characterize hearing. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 78

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Links to the book’s ongoing theme that practical engineering needs (telephone development) drove the foundational measurement tools of psychoacoustics.

Related

• The telephone industry drove development of technologies for measuring hearing. (similarity 0.97)
• Bell Labs pursued only hearing questions relevant to telephone engineering. (similarity 0.89)
• Bell Labs research priorities were shaped by telephone engineering needs (similarity 0.88)
• Early 20th-century hearing research was steered by telephone engineering needs. (similarity 0.86)
• Corporate and technical goals, notably telephony, shaped which auditory abilities researchers studied (similarity 0.86)
• Commercial telephone bandwidth standards derive from interwar human listening tests (similarity 0.82)
• Visualizing sound traces directly inspired the electronic microphone and telephone (similarity 0.79)
• Early psychoacoustics lacked tools to control sound intensity independently of frequency (similarity 0.78)