21 JUNE 1935, Page 19

NOISE

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, What are the chief drawbacks in modern life ? Surely " noise "is one of the greatest. Who has not been unpleasantly aroused by the early • morning jangling of milk bottles ? A visit to the Noise Abatement Exhibition which is being held in the Science Museum, South Kensington, until June 30th leaves me with the firm impression that rubber more than any other substance is one of the great factors in making modern life more silent. Among the exhibits in this display one notes rubber castors specially suitable for hospitals and similar institutions, semi-pneumatic rubber mats, rubber wood blocks for road-making, and pneumatic tyres for milk delivery vans an 1. land tractors, and one learns that, again with the object of reducing noise, a' special rubber cement is be tested On a stretch of railway track. Future generations may well put it on record that Mr. Dunlop, the father of the rubber industry,' not only helped to make all wheeled things move faster and easier, but' they may also say of him, " He made the world a quieter place in an age when industry and traffic threatened us with din."—Yours obediently,

ALGERNON ASHTON.

22a Carlton Vale, Maida Vale, N.W.6.