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The Whistle Of Death

MrRING

Android Futureman
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As a LoveHound (aka a Kate Bush fan) I was listening to the Strange Phenomenon: The Music Of Kate Bush podcast about her song Experiment IV. The storyline relayed by the lyrics of the song is about an experiment in sound that leads to a murderous event, and it has a boffo horror-themed music video with some cool celeb cameos:

The podcast (episode S05E18) went in exciting (or excruciating if not a fan) detail about the song, it's creation, musical style and all that. However, they got to talking about the inspiration for the tune, and that was quite interesting. As related starting roughly at the 19 minute mark of the podcast from an old issue of the Kate fanzine Home Ground, number 25, in an article written by Peter Fitzgerald Morris,

Experiment IV was based on a story that Kate heard about a scientist in France who built a giant steam whistle to assess the effects of the sound. The effect was simple: it killed him and a number of the people in the surrounding area. The area had to be cordoned off and the public kept out until the device powering the whistle ran out of fuel.

If Kate heard the story, it may have been made up wholecloth then and there with no relation to any reported story. However, I bet if this was being related through a reported event we must have a thread about it here. Or maybe somebody else has come across such a tale.
 
As a LoveHound (aka a Kate Bush fan) I was listening to the Strange Phenomenon: The Music Of Kate Bush podcast about her song Experiment IV. The storyline relayed by the lyrics of the song is about an experiment in sound that leads to a murderous event, and it has a boffo horror-themed music video with some cool celeb cameos:

The podcast (episode S05E18) went in exciting (or excruciating if not a fan) detail about the song, it's creation, musical style and all that. However, they got to talking about the inspiration for the tune, and that was quite interesting. As related starting roughly at the 19 minute mark of the podcast from an old issue of the Kate fanzine Home Ground, number 25, in an article written by Peter Fitzgerald Morris,



If Kate heard the story, it may have been made up wholecloth then and there with no relation to any reported story. However, I bet if this was being related through a reported event we must have a thread about it here. Or maybe somebody else has come across such a tale.

Fellow Kate fan here, albeit not of the “read the fanzine/listen to the podcast” type.

l have heard that exact tale - The Whistle of Death - though l can’t recall the source. lt may have been in an article exploring sonic weapons, e.g. the German WW2 Wirbelwind Kanone (Whirlwind Cannon) and Turbulenz Kanone (Vortex Cannon):

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/10/26/the-tornado-bomb/

maximus otter
 
Those are fascinating bits of historical weird weaponry that you linked there @maximus otter - thanks! Now we've got to track down that elusive Whistle of Death (if it is indeed a different tale)!
 
That could be it, though he doesn't appear to have bought the farm sucking down whistle sound... top research!
 
“…the team built a giant whistle, hooked to a compressed air hose. Then they turned on the air. Professor Gavreau says: "Luckily, we were able to turn it off quickly. All of us were sick for hours. Everything in us was vibrating: stomach, heart, lungs. All the people in the other laboratories were sick too. They were very angry with us."

The first blast was audible only to 190 Hz. It had an acoustical force of about 100 Watts, compared with one watt for a football referee's whistle. From then on the tem worked at lowering the frequency, but carefully kept the power input down.

A bigger whistle was built, measuring about five feet across. It emits a very low but audible tone, at about 37 Hz. If turned on full blast, it would develop 2000 Watts--and the building would fall down like the walls of Jericho before Joshua's trumpet. At the pressures used it has done no more than put cracks in the ceiling.

The team has discovered that the wave length most dangerous to human life is 7 Hz. At 7 Hz, turned on very softly, one has a vague impression of sound, and a general feeling of discomfort. At 3.5 Hz, nothing can be heard directly but there is a curious incidental effect. Nearby sounds, such as air hissing into the pipe, take on a pulsing quality--at 3.5 pulsations a second. All sounds in the neighbourhood seem to ululate rhymically. The team has suffered from its experiments. Some of the invisible injuries appear to be persistent.

"It not only affects the ears," Professor Gavreau says, "but it works directly on the internal organs. There is a rubbing between the various organs because of a sort of resonance. It provokes an irritation so intense that for hours afterwards any low-pitched sound seems to echo through one's body."

In developing a military weapon, scientists intend to revert to a policeman's whistle form, perhaps as big as eighteen feet across, mount it on a truck and blow it with a fan turned by a small airplane engine. This weapon, they say, will give forth an all-destroying 10,000 acoustic watts. It could kill a man five miles away.

There is one snag: at present, the machine is as dangerous to its operators as to the enemy. The team is working on a way to focus it. Various systems of baffles have been tried, but the most promising method appears to be propagation of a different and complementary sound a wave length backward from the machine. This changes the frequency of airwave length moving in that direction, thus protecting anyone to the rear. There is, of course, a much simpler means of protection: turn the machine on from a safe distance.

This summary of Professor Vladimir Gavreau's experiments with infrasound is based on the Sunday Times article.

A much more comprehensive article has appeared in an American periodical, The National Enquirer, Vol.42, No. 27, March 10, 1968.”

https://gorgeaway.blogspot.com/

maximus otter
 
I found this article which includes what appears to be a version of the story Kate Bush heard, although it differs in some details.

The first documented attempt to reproduce the infrasound effects was by Vladimir Gavreau in 1957. He became interested in infrasound when asked to cure a case of “Sick Building Syndrome.” The staff at a research plant in Marseilles were mysteriously falling ill. Chemical or pathogen poisoning was suspected, but Gavreau eventually traced the origin of the illnesses to air-conditioning units rotating fans that were generating low-frequency sound waves.

Gavreau began to experiment with low-frequency acoustics with the intention of creating a viable audio weapon for the French military. Several prototype designs were produced, christened “canon sonique” consisting of piston driven tubes and smaller compressed air horns and whistles. Gavreau and his team tested the instruments on themselves at the Marseilles plant with unexpected results. One of the team members died instantly “his internal organs mashed into an amorphous jelly by the vibrations.”

Fortunately, they could turn it off quickly; even so, others in nearby laboratories were sick for hours. Everything was vibrating: stomach, heart, lungs.

https://insidesources.com/silent-sound-kills/


Edit: Max beat me to it. :salute:
 
The team has discovered that the wave length most dangerous to human life is 7 Hz. At 7 Hz, turned on very softly, one has a vague impression of sound, and a general feeling of discomfort. At 3.5 Hz, nothing can be heard directly but there is a curious incidental effect. Nearby sounds, such as air hissing into the pipe, take on a pulsing quality--at 3.5 pulsations a second. All sounds in the neighbourhood seem to ululate rhymically. The team has suffered from its experiments. Some of the invisible injuries appear to be persistent.
Way way back in the 1980's I was firmly instructed to never make any kind of electronic system that oscillated at <10Hz and that 7Hz (or thereabouts) driving a speaker or a lamp might well cause severe problems.
 
“…

There is one snag: at present, the machine is as dangerous to its operators as to the enemy. The team is working on a way to focus it. Various systems of baffles have been tried, but the most promising method appears to be propagation of a different and complementary sound a wave length backward from the machine. This changes the frequency of airwave length moving in that direction, thus protecting anyone to the rear. There is, of course, a much simpler means of protection: turn the machine on from a safe distance.
Drone vehicles will have fixed that problem right up.
 
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