August 22, 2006

Acoustic location was used from mid-WW1 to the early years of WW2 for the passive detection of aircraft by picking up the noise of the engines. It was rendered obsolete before and during WW2 by the introduction of radar, which was far more effective. The Sound Mirrors Project attempts to reinvent this technology for the 21st Century with the help of modern age communications. See this page (via this post) for more information on sound mirrors.
posted by genial 17 years ago
  • Beauty idea, eh? *puts 'Japanese War Tuba' on Amazon wish-list*
  • soundmirrors.org got monkified or something. Server not found.
  • I don't understand why in the 1930s they didn't put these on continuously rotating mounts with some sort of oscilloscope. It would be really easy to quantify whatever the device was picking up and get an accurate azimuth.
  • Fascinating. Even if the Japanese versions *do* look like Dr. Seuss.
  • Great link - I love these things. Are there any samples of the sound they picked up? I'm sure I heard it on a documentary once, and it was an amazing, ominous, howling drone. Aerial pic of one The Japanese war tuba reminds me of this Hate the soundmirrors.org website design though. Flash with no purpose does my head in.
  • like a bat, man.