Tony F. W. Embleton
80 Sheardown Drive
Nobleton, ON LOG lNO
Paul D. Schomer
Schomer and Associates Inc.
2117 Robert Drive
Champaign, IL 61821
Susan B. Blaeser
Acoustical Society of America Standards Secretariat
35 Pinelawn Road, Suite 114E
Melville, NY 11747
Special Lay-Language Paper for
ASA's 75th Anniversary Meeting
May 2004
Regulations to control community noise existed as long ago as 600 BC in the Greek city of Sybaris and at about 100 AD in Ancient Rome, with an increasing pace of activity in the past century. Technical acoustical standards specifying procedures, instruments and terminology came into being about 80 years ago. International meetings were held during the 1920s that sought agreement on terminology. It was during that time that such basic terms as the"bel" and "decibel," named after Alexander Graham Bell, were defined and quantified.
At the second meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in December 1929,
a "Committee on Acoustical Standardization" was appointed and this
is the predecessor of our present-day ASA Committee on Standards. The first
chair of this committee was H. A. Frederick of Bell Telephone Labs. The committee
limited its task to standardizing the terminology used by members of the Society,
because they thought that other organizations might want to use different definitions.
The January 1931 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society listed 160 definitions
of acoustical terms which fell under seven headings.
Within a year it was apparent that these definitions needed to have broader
application, and at the request of the Acoustical Society what was then called
the American Standards Association initiated a project to standardize acoustical
measurements and terminology. The new committee, designated Z24, was assigned
to the Society with the scope: "Preparation of standards of terminology,
units, scales, and methods of measurement in the field of acoustics." A
standard on terminology and units was published in 1936, the ancestor of our
current S1.1, and also a standard on sound level meters, the predecessor of
our current S1.4. Formal publication of standards remained relatively infrequent.
In 1942, the scope of Z24 was expanded to include mechanical vibration and shock.
During World War II, there had been many advances in measurement methods, instrumentation, materials and structures. By 1948 this new knowledge was ready to be embodied in standards. The pace of standards development grew rapidly. Between 1949 and 1957, at least twelve new standards were published. In 1954 an important report was published that substantiated for the first time the relationship between hearing loss and exposure to loud sounds. This report, called Z24-X-2, had a major influence on the course of acoustics for several decades.
By 1957, the work of Z24 had expanded so much that it was split into three committees. These were called S1 Acoustics, S2 Mechanical Vibration and Shock, and S3 Bioacoustics. The letter S designates Sound. Standards committee S4 was created at the same time and was assigned to the Audio Engineering Society. By 1981, when a new committee was formed to focus on the effects of noise on humans, until then jointly under the aegis of both Sl and S3, the next available designator was S 12. This too was assigned to the Acoustical Society.
Until 1969, the standards committee Z24 and then later the several S-committees
were administered by the USA Standards Institute, and ASA's Executive Council
was the body to approve acoustical standards. The council did this upon the
advice of the Standards Advisor to the Executive Council. Starting in 1970 and
extending over the next several years, major administrative changes took place.
In 1970, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers asked the US Standards
Institute to be allowed to take over the work of S2 Mechanical Vibration and
Shock ASME's rationale was that they developed the US position on ISO standards
and this cost a lot of money. On the other hand, the Acoustical Society approved,
and received the revenue from sales of, the national standards generated by
S2 and this made money. The technical work was similar, and often the same people
were involved. Both the Society and ASME agreed that the same organization should
deal with both, but the Society argued successfully that the work of S2 was
just as much a part of acoustics as was Sl and S3 and should not be separated.
In the end, ISO work was assigned to the Acoustical Society. With the increased
workload of the international standards, and an increased financial and personnel
commitment by the Society, the society's standards activities were restructured.
In 1972 Avril Brenig became the Society 's first Standards Manager, in charge
of the Society 's newly created Standards Secretariat.
Shortly afterwards, the US Standards Institute underwent a reorganization, with new mandate. It became the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and it possessed the authority to approve all national standards. Meanwhile, the Society was assigned the responsibility to develop national acoustical standards and to administer development of the U.S. position on international standards for both ISO and IEC.
With all these changes, the Society no longer needed a Standards Advisor to the Executive Council. So, in 1978 Henning von Gierke became the Society 's first Standards Director. The Standards Director is an officer of the Society and is a member of the Executive Council. Also in 1978, the Society created a new Committee on Standards to be chaired by the Standards Director. This committee provides oversight of the work of the four S-committees, and the work of the Standards Secretariat that both administers the S-committees and serves as their interface with ANSI.
This has been a quick tour of the Society's history in standards, but most
important are the actual standards that have been developed. The main purpose
of ASA is to "increase and diffuse the knowledge of acoustics and promote
its practical application. " The Standards Program of the Society is a
primary means by which it fulfils this mission. The early standards on terminology,
measurement, instruments and the important Z24-X-2 standard on hearing loss
were mentioned above. Recently, the Society published the very important ANSI
S12.60 standard that sets criteria for adequate classroom acoustics. Between
these two reports has been a host of standards on a broad range of topics such
as environmental noise assessment, audiometric testing and equipment, and sound
power and sound intensity measurement. These 110 standards support society and
the American public, and they certainly increase and diffuse the knowledge of
acoustics and promote its practical application.