Apple has been dealing with a technical fiasco around the release of the iPhone 4. Today, CEO Steve Jobs held a press conference to address how the company is going to fix a number of bugs with the phone and compensate consumers for the glitches.
Jobs’ talk gave tech geeks and language enthusiasts a double, unexpected treat: a glimpse into a secret testing facility, and exposure to a great word: anechoic.
Anechoic is a simple combination of Greek roots, an- “not,” and echoic, “pertaining to an echo.” The term originates in electronics to describe anechoic chambers, rooms designed to completely block sound or other electromagnetic waves. The blockage applies both to keeping sound out of the room and reducing the ability of sounds within the room to travel.
If you’ve ever noticed the oddly-shaped panels (acoustic tiles) on the walls and ceilings of restaurants or theaters, you get the idea of the types of materials used to create the anechoic environment. Jobs showed images of Apple’s state-of-the-art chamber that looked like something from outer space. Here’s the quote from Job’s speech: “You have to build these rooms or you don’t get accurate results. This is a state of the art facility. We’ve invested over $100 million on this. We have 17 anechoic chambers.”
Basically, Apple uses these massive rooms to test reception and potential interference from other electronic transmissions.
Enjoy this rare lexical specimen and may your signals always be stronger than the noise.
Click here to learn what the “I” in iPhone stands for.
I luv dictionary.com. This is an awesome website.
very informative.I make sure to always remember that new word though.
Just one nit to pick: Sound is not a form of electromagnetic radiation; it is a compression wave transmitted through a physical medium, such as air or solid matter. While an anechoic chamber does prevent sounds from echoing inside the chamber, and is supposed to prevent external sounds from entering the chamber, it does not necessarily block the passage of electromagnetic radiation (e.g., radio waves or light waves). In order to block electromagnetic waves, you need to construct the room within a Faraday cage. Maybe Apple’s anechoic chambers are in fact constructed this way, but that’s not a generally true statement of all anechoic chambers.
“…designed to completely block sound or other electromagnetic waves…”
That implies that sound is an electromagnetic wave. It isn’t.
[...] a bit and learn something that may be new to you — Please come with us to our Chamber for an “ANECHOIC” point of view. –>>Rupert [...]
Bill, you can assume such but one might also venture to guess that “other” means extraneous electromagnetic waves that may interfere with the experiential testing process. That would be my understanding.
what is dict dot com tryin to do; involve pop culture
@iluvmykids:
you love your kids or dictionary.com?
the word wouldn’t stick in my head before, but the moment you explained the root of the word (an- “not,” and echoic, “pertaining to an echo.”), I can remember it easily. Glad you did that. Thanks.
Mr. Jobs was conducting a symphony inside his anechoic chamber.
Well technology will always give us new and interesting words…. no mystery there. And Steve Jobs will do his absolute best to get people talking about him and his product. So I wish, sometimes, that the news media would become anechoic in response to the constant stream of PR (standing for two other letters) coming from the techno-industry. These guys should be paying for advertising… 
We sonographers have been using the word “anechoic” for years.
“Now I just have to find a way to slip it into casual speech!”
You do that, people will find out where you picked up the word (from an Apple related news article.) You’d be labeled a fangirl for good. Then wherever you go on the internet, you have to make sure there isn’t any Windows users or discussion of computers, or there would be no end to your persecution.
Not really a fiasco is it?
Is there any site that compares functions of latest wireless reading
divices in the market?
a vampire, care of self, there would be a way out. If materialization of
bloodsucking is prevented, then some glitches must have had happened.
I have not tried that tropical fruit although I had a chance years ago.
Your definition of “anechoic” is decent, but your characterization of what Jobs and Apple said has little basis in reality. At what point did Jobs say there were iPhone 4 “glitches” for which Apple would be providing compensation? In fact, I think he spent virtually the entire time making exactly the opposite point.
“…block sound or other electromagnetic waves”
As has been noted above, sound is not an EM wave. But it’s a fun idea to explore the physics of “But what if it were?”. Many of the aural phenomena we are used to would be utterly different, because of the speed differences (sound waves move at a leisurely 340 metres per second or so; all EM waves move at “light speed” which is 300 *million* metres per second). So if sound really was EM, we could never distinguish echoes – the signal would return much too fast. It would be harder to tell the directionality of a sound (as well as using the loudness difference, our brain also uses the minute phase delay between the times it reaches our two ears to tell where it came from – that would be also be much too fast). Thunder would be heard at exactly the same instant as the lightning flash is seen – so no more counting the seconds between flash and boom to work out how far away the storm is! There would be no “sound barrier” for jet planes, and no “sonic booms” when they pass it. The Doppler change in pitch, normally heard when a vehicle passes with its sirens blaring, would be imperceptible, because the velocity of the vehicle would be negligible compared to the speed of light. And so on. It would be a world of very different experiences.
Isn’t sounds just vibrations? different vibrations make different sounds :] just like a speaker works, so that rooms is made to make sure no “Outside” vibrations can get inside.
it was very interesting to read.
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
haha, this is a great post — thanks for sharing and teaching me a new word.
Now I just have to find a way to slip it into casual speech!