In Western Europe as well as North America, the first half of the twentieth century showed a heigthened awareness of the problem of noise. Intellectuals, scientists, and engineers published pamphlets and essays about noise, founded noise abatement societies, and organized anti-noise campaigns. At the same time, hundreds of articles appeared in the popular press. One of the problems spoken about was the noise nuisance coming from neighbours and its relation to the introduction of new technologies such as the gramophone and the radio.

Disturbance itself was nothing new. Community by-laws regulating noise, including the noise nuisance of neighbours, date back to the middle ages or even to antiquity. It is interesting to examine, however, how the 'mechanical age' changed the sounds produced by neighbours and thus their nearest sound environment. How did citizens respond to such new neighbourly sounds? What ways and means did they have to complain, to settle neighbours' quarrels, and to create acoustic privacy?

More specifically, this paper aims to understand how the Dutch government's claim, formulated in the mid-seventies, that it was impossible to catch 'personal noise' or the noise of neighbours 'inside a legislative system' came into being, even though that noise had been part of a legislative system for centuries. I understand this policy to be the result of two longterm developments that both started in the first half of the twentieth century. First, changing class relations made it increasingly difficult to impose by law the elitist norms concerning noise and silence upon other social classes. Second, a 'subjectivation' or even 'pathologization' of complaints against noise by experts, made it less evident to juridically silence the sounds of some neighbours while allowing those of the other neighbours to remain audible.

Karin Bijsterveld is historian and assistant professor at the Technology and Society Studies Department, Faculty of Arts and Culture, University of Maastricht. She published on the history of academic and political discourse concerning the elderly and graying populations, including her PhD thesis Geen kwestie van leeftijd. Verzorgingsstaat, wetenschap en discussies rond ouderen in Nederland, 1945-1982 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1996). A summary in English ('Not a Matter of Age. Welfare state, Science and Debates about the Elderly in The Netherlands, 1945-1982') is available.

Other publications are: Stavenuiter, M., K. Bijsterveld en S. Jansens (Red.), Lange levens, stille getuigen. Oudere vrouwen in het verleden (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1995) and 'A Servile Imitation. Disputes about Machines in Music, 1910-1930' in Braun, H.-J. (Ed.) 'I Sing the Body Electric'. Music and Technology (Hofheim: Wolke, to be published in the fall of 1999). Her current research focuses on the history of technology and the problem of noise; on technology and music; and on gender, age and technology in architecture and housing.