A tribute to Richard N. Hamme: The father of open office acoustics.

The late Richard (Dick) Hamme, proprietor and founder of Geiger and Hamme Laboratories in Ann Arbor, Michigan was a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, and a leader and pioneer in the development of procedures for the evaluation of acoustical materials and architectural systems. Dick and his associates corrected major misconceptions about open plan office acoustics. Many said that achieving speech privacy in the open plan was impossible. Not only did his efforts prove entirely the opposite, he invented, developed, and nurtured a whole technology that is just now being understood by the acoustical community. Procedures developed by Hamme for the U.S. General Services Administration, Public Building Services were used by public and private sector specifiers alike. Known as PBS C.1, C.2, and C.3 with several ancillary standards, these documents led to the re-thinking of the acoustical specifications in terms of system performance. After many years of use, these documents have been recently adopted by ASTM Committee E-33, Environmental Acoustics. This paper describes the evolution of the achievement of confidential speech privacy, a process that began in the late 1960’s and has been refined to a technology of its own.