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Membership Service Questionnaire
Following through after the extensive discussion about cost, type and quality of membership service at the October 1952 Board of Governors Meeting, Society headquarters mailed a questionnaire early this month, with the annual membership dues invoices, to all members, except Students, in the United States. The earlier mailing date for invoices to members outside the United States did not permit sending questionnaires to them.
Within the ensuing two weeks about six hundred members replied. The volume of returns is gratifying and confirms the fact
that the SMPTE is a membership society. The exactness and thoughtfulness of the replies will add up to a valuable guide to confirm some, and modify other, SMPTE policies.
If you have not returned your questionnaire, please send it along. The tally for a report to the Board of Governors and in the Journal to the membership will not be closed for a few weeks. Comments and suggestions are always gratefully received, especially suggestions and leads for technical papers or new products items. — V.A.
Book Review
Musical Engineering
By Harry F. Olson. Published (1952) by McGraw-Hill, 330 W. 42 St., New York 36. i-ix + 357 pp. + 11 -pp. index. 303 illus. 6 X 9 in. Price $6.50.
An encyclopedic volume, even a compressed one, cannot help but strike a responsive chord within a wide range of engineers when it is as carefully prepared as this one. The engineering bases for approaching music will be nothing new to the acoustics engineer but others will find the engineering principles and the surrounding meat of the text often of great interest and nicely, if not too simply and disarmingly, presented. The attention of the general reader and the acoustics engineer alike may be held by the wealth and width of this survey. The acoustics engineer, and many of his fellow engineers in other fields, will find ample bibliographical references throughout to guide
them to detailed studies. As far as periodicals go, the Journal of the Acoustical Society is most often cited, with this Journal a strong second in parts of the book.
For fuller technical explanations, the author often gives as a general reference his earlier book, Elements of Acoustical Engineering. The author is director of the Acoustical Laboratory, RCA Laboratories, Princeton, N.J.
To carry out its aim — an engineering treatment of the interrelated subjects of music, musical instruments, acoustics, sound reproduction and hearing — the book is organized in these nine chapters: Sound Waves; Musical Terminology; Scales ; Resonators and Radiators ; Musical Instruments; Characteristics of Musical Instruments; Properties of Music; Theater, Studio and Room Acoustics; and Sound Reproducing Systems. The numerous illustrations and the index contribute to the book's worthiness. — V.A.
Meetings
American Institute of Electrical Engineers (Symposium on the Science of Music and Its
Reproduction — 4th Lecture), Feb. 20, Engineering Societies Bldg., New York, N. Y.
National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Mar. 9-12, Edgewater Beach Hotel,
Chicago, 111.
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Southwest Subsection Meeting,
Mar. 16, Fort Worth, Tex.
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