Discord: The Story of Noise review

Mike Goldsmith has created a fascinating cornucopia of sound, from the big bang to the present day

According to Mike Goldsmith, "looking at the history of noise is in some sense a way of looking at the history of ourselves". He begins at the very beginning with the big bang which, disappointingly, was silent. But within a mere 380,000 years the universe was resonating with a "vast deep tone", about one-trillionth of a hertz. Ancient peoples were adept at exploiting acoustics: the space inside Stonehenge is "nearly as reverberant as a concert hall". But it was in cities that humans became really noisy. The inhabitants of ancient Rome complained about traffic noise and in 1627 John Evelyn said of London that so "lowd a Town, is no where to be found in the whole world". Noise levels increased in the machine age. Charles Babbage listed 165 noisy interruptions to his work in 80 days. His unsympathetic neighbours responded to his complaints by hiring musicians to play outside his house. Even today the EU estimates that half of its urban citizens suffer from excessive noise. But in this fascinating cornucopia of sound, Goldsmith is optimistic about the future: "we really can have a quieter tomorrow".