Riverbank Laboratories | |
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Riverbank Labs, Riverbank Acoustical Laboratory | |
Location | 1512 S. Batavia Ave. Geneva, Illinois |
Built | 1918 |
Built by | Wallace Sabine, George Fabyan |
Website | https://riverbankacoustics.com/ |
Riverbank Laboratories | |
Location | 1512 Batavia Ave., Geneva, Illinois |
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Area | 3.5 acres (1.4 ha) |
Built | 1912 |
Architect | Wilson Brothers |
Architectural style | Bungalow/Craftsman |
NRHP reference No. | 03001204 |
Added to NRHP | November 28, 2003 |
Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories (RAL), (often referred to as Riverbank or Riverbank Labs), is a NVLAP accredited acoustical testing agency founded by George Fabyan in 1913. [1] [ third-party source needed ]
The testing service remains a highly respected source of independent acoustical materials testing. RAL specializes in STC (Sound Transmission Loss per ASTM E90), NRC (Sound Absorption per ASTM C423), IIC (Impact Sound Transmission per ASTM E492), and Sound Power (ISO 6926) testing. The current address for the company is 1512 Batavia Ave. Geneva, IL. This location also houses the Riverbank Acoustical Museum and Acoustical Library. [2] [3]
The acoustical laboratory building was funded and built by Colonel George Fabyan on his vast Riverbank Estate in Geneva, Illinois. [4] Colonel Fabyan was a patron of obscure sciences, and references to his "Riverbank laboratories" exist as early as 1916. [5] In 1913, Fabyan hired Wallace Clement Sabine to help tune an acoustical levitation machine built according to specifications decoded from a Sir Francis Bacon work. Sabine ultimately convinced the colonel that the machine would never work, and the two became close friends. After hearing Sabine's complaints of the poor conditions of his acoustical test lab at Harvard, Colonel Fabyan agreed to build a state of the art reverberation chamber and test facility for Sabine to use on the property.
Sabine died in 1919, shortly after the lab was constructed. The task of managing the Laboratory Operations was granted to his cousin, Paul Sabine, who refined the test methods and developed the lab into a successful business. After Paul retired, the lab operations were handed to Hale Sabine and the Armour Research Foundation of the Illinois Institute of Technology. The Armour Research Foundation (ARF) was renamed IITRI in 1963. IITRI funded a large expansion to the laboratory in the 1960s, which included a new transmission loss facility. In 2002, the technology and engineering divisions of IITRI (Including Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories) were spun off into a new company named Alion Science and Technology. Today, Alion conducts advanced acoustical testing operations in the facility for many prominent acoustical material manufacturers and government agencies.
In the facility's early days, it also housed a cryptology team that worked to decipher codes from the works of Sir Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, and enemy military communications. [4] Fabyan allowed the U.S. Government to use Riverbank Laboratories to their disposal during World War I [6] and German and Mexican codes were deciphered there. Much of the cryptanalysis was done by William and Elizebeth Friedman. [3] In 1993, the National Security Agency (NSA) recognized the work with a plaque reading "To the Memory of George Fabyan From a Grateful Government: In recognition of the voluntary and confidential service rendered by Colonel Fabyan and his Riverbank Laboratories in the sensitive areas of cryptanalysis and cryptologic training during a critical time of national need on the eve of America's entry into World War I." [7] [8] The building is recognized in the National Register of Historic Places. [9]
Cryptanalysis refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic security systems and gain access to the contents of encrypted messages, even if the cryptographic key is unknown.
William Frederick Friedman was a US Army cryptographer who ran the research division of the Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1930s, and parts of its follow-on services into the 1950s. In 1940, subordinates of his led by Frank Rowlett broke Japan's PURPLE cipher, thus disclosing Japanese diplomatic secrets before America's entrance into World War II.
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RAL or variation, may refer to:
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Sound Transmission Class is an integer rating of how well a building partition attenuates airborne sound. In the US, it is widely used to rate interior partitions, ceilings, floors, doors, windows and exterior wall configurations. Outside the US, the Sound Reduction Index (SRI) ISO index is used. The STC rating very roughly reflects the decibel reduction of noise that a partition can provide. The STC is useful for evaluating annoyance due to speech sounds, but not music or machinery noise as these sources contain more low frequency energy than speech.
Sound 80 is a recording studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States founded by engineer Tom Jung and composer/musician Herb Pilhofer in 1969. Largely involved with local artists, the studio is best known for recording portions of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks in 1974 and Cat Stevens' Izitso in 1977, as well as demo tapes for Prince's first album For You in 1977.
Below is a timeline of notable events related to cryptography.
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Geneva is a city in and the county seat of Kane County, Illinois, United States. It is located on the western side of the Chicago suburbs. Per the 2020 census, the population was 21,393.
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IIT Research Institute (IITRI), also known historically and interchangeably as IIT Research Center, is a high-technology scientific research organization and applied research laboratory located in Chicago, Illinois. Previously known as the Armour Research Foundation, the IITRI is an independent corporation that operates collaboratively with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the U.S. Government.
Elizabeth Wells Gallup was an American educator and exponent of the Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship.
Fabyan Villa was the home of George and Nelle Fabyan from c. 1908 to 1939. The house is notable because of its remodelling in 1907 by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was the centerpiece of the Fabyans country estate, which they named Riverbank. The Kane County Forest Preserve District of Illinois purchased the majority of the Fabyan estate in 1939, and operated the Fabyans' home as a museum off and on beginning in 1940. In 1995 Preservation Partners of the Fox Valley was enlisted to operate the site and developed the Fabyan Villa Museum into a Fabyan historic home museum, where photographs, the Fabyans' personal artifact collections, and a limited number of original furnishings, as well as the Riverbank story are shared with the public.
"Colonel" George Fabyan was a millionaire businessman who founded a private research laboratory. Fabyan's laboratory pioneered modern cryptography, though its initial findings, supporting Fabyan's belief that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, were later disproven by the cryptographers who trained there.
The Riverbank Publications are a series of pamphlets written by the people who worked for millionaire George Fabyan in the multi-discipline research facility he built in the early 20th century near Chicago. They were published by Fabyan, often without author credit. The publications on cryptanalysis, mostly written by William Friedman, with contributions from Elizebeth Smith Friedman and others, are considered seminal in the field. In particular, Publication 22 introduced the Index of Coincidence, a powerful statistical tool for cryptanalysis.