The Shot Is Fired Unheard: Sigmund Exner and the Physiology of Reverberation

摘要

In 1905, the Viennese physiologist Sigmund Exner (1846-1926) published an essay titled "Uber die Akustik von Horsalen und ein Instrument, sie zu bestimmen" (On the acoustics of lecture halls and an instrument to determine them).1 In this essay Exner argued for the need to improve the acoustics of the growing number of lecture halls at European universities. The brief text is scarcely mentioned in the history of architectural acoustics, and Exner, while an important figure in the history of physiology, was by no means one of the key figures in the history of acoustics. Nevertheless, the instrument mentioned in the title of Exner's essay deserves greater attention: with his acoustometer, Exner developed a means to determine the reverberation time in auditoriums in a manner that was markedly different from his contemporaries. In so doing, Exner's essay provides a counternarrative to the more prominent histories told about the rise of objectivity in acoustics.