(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
He was born on June 13, 1868 in Richwood, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Hylas and Anna (Ware) Sabine and a descendant of William Sabine or Sabin who was settled in Rehoboth, Massachussets, in 1643. According to family tradition, each of his four names represented one of the four racial strains that were joined in him: Scotch, Dutch, English, and French. His English forebears were Quakers and his French forebears probably Huguenots, and, though he subscribed to no religious creed, his moral qualities were such as one might expect from such a lineage.
Education
He was graduated A. B. from Ohio State University in 1886, having been a student of Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, and the same year enrolled as a graduate student in mathematics and physics at Harvard. Here he received the degree of A. M. in 1888. He never became a candidate for the doctorate, although he possessed remarkable aptitude for research requiring a high degree of experimental skill.
Career
In 1889 he was made an assistant in physics, and rose through the various grades thereafter to a professorship in 1905.
In 1895, however, upon the completion of the Fogg Art Museum, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, its auditorium proved to be "monumental in its acoustic badness, " and Sabine was designated by President Eliot to remedy the defect. As a result of the interest thus aroused and the consequent experimentation, so far as the properties of auditoriums are concerned, Sabine in less than twenty years brought architectural acoustics from the empirical state, in which success with any new structure was a happy accident and failure was a misfortune often made ridiculous by such attempted remedies as the stringing of wires in the overhead space, to the status of a reasoned science and a precise art.
After the death of Professor Nathaniel Southgate Shaler in 1906, Sabine was made dean of the Lawrence Scientific School, and in 1908 of the Harvard Graduate School of Applied Science, which was initiated under his influence. After about seven years this school disappeared in a merger between Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for applied science teaching, an arrangement which Sabine approved.
In the spring of 1917 he gave a course of lectures on architectural acoustics at the Sorbonne and soon afterward devoted himself, without official status but very effectively, to a study of aerial warfare and the promotion of a better understanding between England, France, and Italy as to the means and methods of such warfare.
Returning to America in the fall of 1917, he placed the experience and knowledge he had thus gained at the service of the government, and from that time until the end of the World War he, though still as a civilian, held an important office in the military air service, being the final authority to select from the samples sent from overseas instruments to be reproduced in the United States. He divided his time between this service and teaching at Harvard, going back and forth weekly between Cambridge and Washington, though his health had been seriously broken since the fall of 1916. He survived the war, but died soon after its close.
Achievements
He founded the field of architectural acoustics. Sabine deployed sound absorbing materials throughout the Fogg Lecture Hall to cut its reverberation time and reduce the "echo effect. " This accomplishment cemented Wallace Sabine's career, and led to his hiring as the acoustical consultant for Boston's Symphony Hall, the first concert hall to be designed using quantitative acoustics. His acoustic design was successful and Symphony Hall is generally considered one of the best symphony halls in the world. The unit of sound absorption, the sabin, was named in his honor.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Connections
Sabine married on August 22, 1900, Dr. Jane Downes Kelly, a physician of established reputation who continued in practice after marriage. Two daughters were born to them.
