The Era of Megaphonics - On the Productivity of Loud Sound, 1880-1930

TL;DR — Tim Hecker’s McGill PhD thesis on the turn-of-the-century fascination with loud sound as a force: the world’s loudest pipe organ, coastal fog signals and shock-wave science.

A PhD thesis in Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, by Timothy Hecker, also known as an electronic musician. Where most histories of sound around 1900 focus on noise-abatement campaigns, Hecker looks at people who valued loud sound for its power — its ability, in his words, to “paralyze the body, empty the mind and even threaten life” — and at the utopian hopes attached to it.

It has three case studies: the push to build the world’s loudest instrument, a pipe organ; the spread of powerful fog-signalling along North American coastlines; and the development of shock-wave science, which came to understand sound as a physical and potentially lethal force. It distinguishes measurable intensity from subjective loudness.

What it is: a doctoral thesis, examined and deposited in McGill’s institutional repository, which hosts the open copy.

Where this came from

• A copy saved in October 2026.
• Public copy: https://mcgill.scholaris.ca/handle/20.500.14905/94573

224 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.