Full marks for submitter’s HN name! I skimmed the article briefly and didn’t see this mentioned, but it was pivotal in the advancement of architectural acousti

Full marks for submitter’s HN name! I skimmed the article briefly and didn’t see this mentioned, but it was pivotal in the advancement of architectural acoustic design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Clement_Sabine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Clement_Sabine Sabine tackled the problem by trying to determine what made the Fogg Lecture Hall different from other, acoustically acceptable facilities. In particular, the Sanders Theater was considered acoustically excellent. For the next several years, Sabine and his assistants spent each night moving materials between the two lecture halls and testing the acoustics. On some nights they would borrow hundreds of seat cushions from the Sanders Theater. Using an organ pipe and a stopwatch, Sabine performed thousands of careful measurements (though inaccurate by present standards) of the time required for different frequencies of sounds to decay to inaudibility in the presence of the different materials. He tested reverberation time with several different types of Oriental rugs inside Fogg Lecture Hall, and with various numbers of people occupying its seats, and found that the body of an average person decreased reverberation time by about as much as six seat cushions. Once the measurements were taken and before morning arrived, everything was quickly replaced in both lecture halls, in order to be ready for classes the next day.