Facilities and Equipment: The Anechoic Chamber, c.1960.
As well as having adequate laboratory and lecture rooms, it was important for the College to have specialist facilities that allowed them to carry out research in the correct environment.
One example of this is that c.1960 it was decided that the Department of Electrical Engineering would carry out a programme of research into the acoustical noise produced by electrical plant-transformers and rotating machines – with the aim of ultimately making it possible to design to specific noise limits. An anechoic chamber was necessary for this work, as a noise free room with substantially non-reflecting inner surfaces.
Another example is that in 1933 the Council decided that the Department of Botany should have use of a portion of the garden at Elmhurst ‘for the cultivation of Herbaceous Perennials, Annuals, small and flowering shrubs of a kind likely to afford useful material and to be available for physiological experimentation.’ These specialist facilities were important for the work of the departments.