Communications in Switzerland

Being born and raised in Ireland and having lived for some years now in the beautiful Lake District area of England, I am well used to having spectacular scenery all around me. Indeed the Lake District is so full of lovely mountains and lakes that it is sometimes referred to as ‘Little Switzerland’. Although being Irish and unashameably bias, I must admit that rural Switzerland is a truly lovely country and of course with modern forms of travel, we can all visit the most remote scenic sites.

Of course, neither travel nor communications did not always exist within these isolated areas and so in many cases urgent communication such as warnings were only possible within the Swiss valleys and mountainsides by using the traditional Alphorn. These were long (8’/2.4m) wooden horns with a wide, curved end, usually carved from spruce or pine. So why did the local inhabitants of these remote areas go to the trouble of carving these very long horns instead of blowing a whistle or bugle – the answer ‘distance’.

Because of its length plus the fact that because it has no lateral openings the Alphorn produces deep, pure natural harmonics which are in fact long, low frequency wavelengths which travel a great distance – literally from valley to valley. The whistle or bugle, with its much smaller resonance chamber, the resultant wavelengths are high pitched and shorter – so they could not be heard in the next valley.

These laws of acoustics – high frequency wavelengths travel shorter distances compared with long, low frequency wavelengths – are employed by us within our range of Audiosonic Acoustic Cleaners. That is why we have a range of six key frequencies between the short 420 Hz frequency and the very long 60Hz frequency. For a more detailed explanation take a peek at this link - http://www.sonic-horns.com/acoustic_frequency.htm - which is contained within my Irishman’s Guide section within the web site – www.sonic-horns.com