The Sabines at Riverbank

This book chronicles the history of the Sabine family, the first family of architectural acoustics and the Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories, the world's first independent laboratory for measuring the acoustical properties of architectural materials. In the early 1900s when this story begins, there was no assembled, coherent body of acoustical literature; only scattered works. Wallace Clement Sabine, a Harvard professor, with great insight, industry and integrity conducted acoustical experiments which led the practice of acoustics in the direction of becoming a quantitative science. Indeed, Wallace Sabine became the foremost acoustician of his day and built a world-famous acoustical consultancy. In 1915 in the course of his consultations for Colonel George Fabyan, a wealthy industrialist and financier, the colonel learned of the inadequacy of Sabine's laboratory at Harvard and proposed that if Sabine were to come to Riverbank, the colonel's estate in Geneva, Illinois, he would construct an acoustical laboratory to the professor's design. Wallace Sabine accepted the offer and thereby set in motion the creation of the Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories. The laboratory was completed in 1918 but Wallace died before filling his appointment. The void was fortuitously filled by a cousin of Wallace, Paul Earls Sabine. Paul, a Harvard graduate, directed the laboratory for nearly three decades, building it in to the world's foremost facility for the research of acoustical materials. It was a period of vigorous acoustical research related in the book and it was during this period, Paul was also involved in the founding the Acoustical Society of America. In 1957, when Paul died, his son, Hale Johnson Sabine, also a Harvard graduate in physics, continued the family tradition of first-rate acoustical research. The Sabines at Riverbank is written by John Kopec, himself a former-director or the laboratory, In this book Kopec tells us about the research and people involved with the birth and first decades of growth of the science of architectural acoustics.