From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Letter inquiring about a 'strobophonometer' for measuring engine noise and its potential use in detonation tests.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 165\4\ img156 | |
| Date | 29th June 1932 | |
| Expl. Dept. Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Ud.3/MJ. June 29th.1932. Y.4691 R.{Sir Henry Royce} Stansfield Esq., A.M.I.C.E., The Anglo Persian Oil Co. Ltd., Research Laboratories, Sunbury-on-Thames. Dear Mr. Stansfield, When visiting your laboratories last December you shewed me an instrument - which I believe you termed a strobophonometer - devised to obtain a relative measure of the intensity of engine noises and which could, when used in conjunction with a contact maker driven by the crankshaft, actually separate many of these noises. When I saw the apparatus it was being used to investigate combustion shock in a single cylinder Gardner high speed oil engine, and, if I remember correctly, the relative intensity of the shock was read off an indicator. It has occurred to us that an apparatus such as you have developed might be very useful in our detonation tests on multi-cylinder engines. Broadly, our problem is to obtain a relative measure of the cylinder noises due to combustion and the strobophonometer appears to provide a suitable basis for this comparison. It would also enable the combustion shock to be separated from the other engine noises and in a multi-cylinder engine it would enable the cylinders to be examined separately. We shall be very glad if you will tell us whether the apparatus is sufficiently developed for this type of work and whether it can be reasonably easily set up and adjusted. We should also be interested to know if you have yet received the new American knock rating engine which it was arranged that we should see when it was in operation. Yours faithfully, For Rolls-Royce Ltd. | ||