Paper short abstract:

Exploring early 20th-century designs of ultrasonic machines, such as the ‘Ultra-Audible Microphone,’ this project focuses on the history of (ultra)sonic detection and (in)audibility in laboratories and uses bats and insects as organic windows into a sonic space that extends beyond the human world.

Paper long abstract:

This paper historically situates experiments on - and speculations about - insect and bat ultrasonic communications in early 20th-century America laboratories. Following Jussi Parikka's call to "think media through its nonhuman forces," (Parikka, xxx) my analysis will explore two iconic moments in which scientific communities crystallized the animal forces of ultrasonic media: (1) the development of the ultra-audible microphone in 1923 by Westinghouse research engineer Phillips Thomas (2) the experiments at the Harvard Cruft Physics Laboratory in 1938, which 'proved' that bats flew by echolocation. Machines, bats, insects, and built environments - such as soundproof rooms - will center this analysis on nonhuman agencies. Using bats and insects as organic windows into a sonic space that extends beyond the human world, I will begin to explore how ultrasonic technologies have interfaced with both material animal bodies and imagined representations of those bodies. I will demonstrate that the bodies of insects and bats, often treated by scientists, engineers, and inventors as vehicles for perception and embodied forms of communication, can inform a history of ultrasonic media in important ways. A focus on (in)audibility, (ultra)sonic detection, and (un)sound requires situating this animal history at the intersection of science studies, media theory, and sound studies, ultimately contributing to a growing body of scholarship that sits uncomfortably on the edges of human perception. Equally worthy of STS attention, privileging the nonhuman sensorium not only reveals inhuman dimensions of media and technology but also brings into focus regimes of human imperceptibility.