Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Science, and Industry

by Leo Beranek
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008
256 pp., illus. 27 b/w. Trade, $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-262-02629-1.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@hogent.be


Leo Leroy Beranek (°1914) grew up in a countryside village in Ohio and went through all the necessary stages of the American dream to become an exemplary member of the cultured American higher middle class. It suffices to mention that he was educated at a modest local high school, received a scholarship against all odds, paid his way through his university education (Harvard, of course) by selling and repairing radio and television sets, was picked out of the crowd of promising students by some brilliant and unconventional professors, and started doing his own research in the at that time (the forties and fifties of last Century) unsexy field of acoustics. After some successful years in academe (MIT), he started his own consultancy business with some colleagues, turned from a researcher into a manager, and finally ended up locked in a 10-year long legal battle over the rights to a part of the frequency spectrum for WCVB-Channel 5, a television broadcasting company 'with higher quality standards than all the others'. Obviously, he and his fellow patrons came out triumphantly. Freed of this burden, he turned back to his first love: acoustics and the design of concert halls. It appears that he wasn't infallible at persuading politicians, critics, and audiences that his designs were superior, and he admits as much without any restraint, but, as it should be, in the end everything turns out well.

If this first paragraph hints at being ironical, nothing of the sort is intended. Beranek's autobiography reads like a novel, with a happy end and a lot of moral lessons for the young and ambitious of today. I am afraid it is simply impossible to be ironic about anything in this book. The story is straightforwardly told, in an unadorned but very readable style. There seems to be no trace of self-aggrandisation, nor is there a hint of spite or 'schadenfreude' - apart maybe where the author quite rightly gloats a bit about his defeated competitors in the legal struggle over "the waves".

The astonishing thing about Beranek's life is precisely that it so clearly exemplifies an American road to success without falling into the fairy-tale mysticisms one reads in lesser autobiographies. If he has a streak of pure luck, he admits to being simply lucky. If he fails, he admits he wasn't successful or he explains that he didn't work hard enough. Leo Beranek, is, as far as one can guess from the text and a bit of background research, simply, utterly and straightforwardly honest. Amazingly, incredibly, and unbelievably honest. And in this way, he indirectly paints a picture of an America that I, as a European, have a lot of second thoughts about. ‘Was and is it really so?’ I have become used to asking: Could it be that harsh, that simple, so full of possibilities and so full of mischief... Could it possibly be that a society or culture combines so much naiveté and wickedness? And should one accept that it really has offered some, if only few, to succeed through hard work, good fortune and high moral standards?

Beranek’s achievements in the science of applied acoustics are exemplary. There is no doubt about that. On top of that, he has been a patron of the arts (classical music, mainly) and tried to raise the standards of broadcasting in the USA. These are no minor achievements. On top of that, he has cared for the members of his family and lived a rich and exciting life. In his self-portrait, he doesn't boast about anything but rather gives everyone who stood by him his or her due. It must be said that anyone who is interested in the history of America and its 'waves', whether acoustical or in broadcasting, will find in this book a wealth of detail and anecdotes worth reading, and will meet an author who is as unpresuming and honest as can possibly be expected.