Emily Thompson is a Visiting Scholar in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She is the author of The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (The MIT Press, 2002), and coeditor, with Peter Galison, of The Architecture of Science (The MIT Press, 1999). Her current research is on the technological transition from silent to sound movies in the American film industry.