John Kopec and the papers of Wallace C. Sabine

In April 1975, the Illinois Institute of Technology called the author saying that some notebooks had been found that appeared to be those of Wallace Clement Sabine. It was thought previous to this find that Sabine had destroyed all of his notebooks and papers because none was found when Professor Theodore Lyman was collecting Sabine’s papers for publication. Those notebooks were studied, a paper was published [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 61, 355–365 (1977)], and they were deposited in the Harvard University Archives. Imagine the surprise when John Kopec called in early 1979, saying that at another location at the Riverbank Acoustical Laboratory, a pile of folders that contained some of Sabine’s consulting experiences had been discovered. John said that he had copied Sabine’s faded pages into typescript, and he invited the author to join with him in studying them and perhaps publishing a paper jointly with him. Discussed here is our work together and our publication of the results [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 69, 367–382 (1981)]. Through this effort readers can judge Sabine’s breadth of activity and his depth of understanding in the field of applied acoustics.