So ask your printer supplier for noise figures if you think this will be a problem. Military standards say that for work needing heavy concentration—in areas like libraries and conference rooms—the sound level must be no more than 45 decibels on the dB(A) scale, which allows for sensitivity of the ear at various sound pitches. Otherwise, aim for a level less than 65 decibels. You may be able to rent the necessary meter from a scientific instrument store. Measure the sound from the distance someone’s head would be when he was working. Here again, you might ask the supplier for a look-see at an existing installation.
Put your printers if necessary inside padded wooden boxes; carpet; drape walls; install sound-muffling panels on ceilings and walls, perhaps.
The less echoey and factorylike your office is, the more productive it will be.
Air Conditioning, Heat, And Ventilation
Around the first week of January 1983, when Time honored the computer as the “Machine of the Year,” a Commerce Department computer ungratefully stopped working and delayed the release of an important government report.
The reported cause was nothing more than a dehumidifier motor out of whack; perhaps the room got too moist for the computer sensor.
If so, I wasn’t surprised. Computers and related machinery can sometimes be quirky about their surroundings. My old Anderson Jacobson daisywheel printer, later sold, wouldn’t run unless the room temperature was above fifty degrees. Since I was comfortable at seventy degrees, I obliged the AJ.
In our attentiveness to machinery, however, let’s not forget the people nearby.
“You can see the heat wafting out the backs of our VDTs,” said a woman with the northeastern insurance office—and yet the firm didn’t turn up the air conditioning. “What might happen,” said Waters about a hot insurance office, “is the [overheated computers] may go down and they’ll pay out extra money, anyway.”
Look inside a VDT and you’ll very likely find an orange glow in the neck of the tube. The heat there may be no more than a light bulb’s, but on a hot day, with more than one machine in the same room, you’ll want your air conditioning to be up to the job.