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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 discussing noise and resonance issues in closed car bodies and proposing a meeting of experts to resolve the matter.

Identifier  ExFiles\Box 3\1\  01-page124
Date  16th October 1924 guessed
  
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which make no noise of themselves, but when even a breath of wind passes over them, or the vibrations of some sound strike them, they immediately set up considerable noise. It can of course be said that a body left alone in a room makes no noise, but when fastened to a chassis there is noise inside the body, but we consider that is no proof that the body is satisfactory as a body. What we are asking your experts carefully to consider is whether it is not possible for you to avoid making those types of bodies that are such pronounced "sounding boards" that the least noise is exaggerated inside.

Commander Briggs assures me that one of your bodies resounds inside for half a minute if one strikes the luggage grid at the back. I only mention this as an example of the way some bodies are resonant.

We realise that you make a very large proportion of our closed bodies, but it is a fact that practically every complaint of noisy bodies that comes to us is concerning Barker closed bodies. It is for this reason we do particularly ask you to do everything possible to overcome this difficulty that we are up against, and so prevent disappointment to our mutual customers and considerable expense to ourselves.

I am told that there are certain shapes of bodies which are prone to produce this trouble, and that so far you have been unable to arrive at any way of overcoming it. We feel that it would be possibly better for you not to make any more bodies of this particular shape until a cure has been found, than to risk supplying a type which we know may probably cause dissatisfaction.

Would it not be well for all your experts to meet all our experts here in London and talk the whole matter over, perhaps with you and myself present? We are sure you are as anxious to get to the bottom of and cure this mutual trouble as we are, and we are most desirous of doing all we can to help. Very often a combined conference, when all opinions are aired, enables a satisfactory conclusion to be arrived at, instead of our perhaps continuing only to see our own side of the question and never getting at the root of the difficulty.

Yours faithfully,

(Signed) B. Johnson.

A.{Mr Adams} Y. Nutt, Esq.
  
  


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