Audio Frequency Response Characteristics of Rooms; A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Committee on Graduate Study of Leland Stanford Junior University

Stanford, CA: Philip G. Caldwell, 1931. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Red clothbound hardcover graduate thesis in electrical engineering from 1931, notable not only for its presentation but also for its signed approval by Frederick E. Terman, widely credited, with William Shockley, as the father of Silicon Valley. Terman encouraged students such as Hewlett and Packard, and perhaps the author of this thesis, to form their own companies, and he invested in them. Scuffing to the front board, clean and crisp inside.

In text and photos, the 72-page thesis documents the author's experiments that show 'the magnitude of the effects which room acoustics have upon the character of the sound reaching observers situated at different points within a room." The premise was predicated on the "rapid development of radio, sound recording, and sound reproducing," which have "forced attention upon the problem of room acoustics."

The official name of Stanford University is Leland Stanford Junior University. As reported in Wikipedia, The Leland Stanford Junior University was founded in 1885 by California Senator (and previous governor) Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Jr., who died of typhoid fever at 15. After, the Stanfords determined that they would use their wealth to do something for other people's children.