Word: knudsen
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...time he was 22 had designed Westinghouse's first auto starter and was on his way up. He also had a touch for labor-management relations. Having moved to General Motors and become its youngest vice president, at 38, he was assigned by G.M. President William Knudsen to take charge of the corporation's dealings with labor. "You have more patience than I have," said Knudsen, "and you talk more." Wilson steered General Motors through the labor conflicts of the late '30s and won the respect of organized labor. Once, when he was recovering from...
Hotheaded Kids. In the cockpit, Oquendo braced himself against the closed door, tapped Flight Engineer Philip Knudsen menacingly with his gun whenever anyone reached for a switch without explanation. Pilot Buchanan nursed a double worry: the Cuban air force might attack because he was out of the normal Havana approach corridor ("They have some hot airplanes there with hotheaded kids flying them," he reported later), and the gunman might start shooting if any passengers tried to storm the door. He got Oquendo's permission to make one laconic announcement on the plane's public-address system: "Ladies...
Even low-intensity tones can be dangerous if they are pure, i.e., if their frequency is limited. The reason: pure tones form a concentration of sound energy within the ear. The most "sensitive" frequencies-those which the body can least tolerate-occur, says Dr. Knudsen, within the octaves of 300-600 cycles per sec. and 600-1,200 cycles (middle C is 261.6 cycles). Warns Dr. Knudsen: "Anyone who lives in an environment where the intensity at these frequencies consistently reaches 85 decibels [for example, alongside a busy jet airport] should have hearing tests-because damage is possible...
Psychological Effects. Workers in noisy surroundings often complain of such apparently psychogenic ailments as nausea, fatigue, headache, loss of neuromuscular coordination, and reduced sexual desire. "Noise can and does drive some people to distraction," says Dr. Knudsen. "If noise does nothing more than interfere with sleep -and this it does on a gigantic scale-it is a menace to good health." Knudsen carefully catalogued causes for his own middle-of-the-night awakenings, found that 75% were the result of noise. Most common culprits: auto horns, barking dogs, ambulance sirens, chirping birds. Dr. Knudsen's solution: earplugs. The plugs...
...Quietest City" awards from the National Noise Abatement Council for a strict program that requires thrice-yearly inspection of car brakes and mufflers, permits horn honking only in emergencies, and prescribes fines for people who keep noisy pets. But more needs to be done, says Physicist Knudsen: "The reduction of noise results in increases in output of labor and in human well-being that usually more than justify the cost of reducing the noise...