Testing The World's Longest Echo

[whispering] I'm inside one of the Inchindown oil tanks, an old oil storage facility in Inverness, in Scotland. This tank is 237 metres long and it's not meant for humans. When it was in use by the Royal Navy all this colossal space would have been filled with fuel oil. With these oil tanks, the Royal Navy accidentally created the greatest reverberation chamber in the world. Flat surfaces enclosed by solid rock, and a chamber big enough that sound takes a whole second or more to go off the far wall and bounce back. But still narrow enough that you get lots of reverberation from all the close surfaces as well. - The construction started in 1938 and it carried on right through the beginning of the war up to around about 1943. The Admiralty had decided that they required bomb-proof storage for their oil. So they set about building a number of oil tanks across Britain. And this, Inchindown, is one of them. The construction required six tanks to be built. The entire complex could easily contain 100,000 tonnes of fuel but one single Royal Navy battleship can drink 5,000 tonnes. So it could go very, very quickly. It is a truly amazing chamber of sound, a cathedral of oil and a cathedral of sound. - So now I'm going to shut up for a bit. Preston here is going to fire a starting pistol, a very, very loud bang. On the screen is a visual display of that sound. Different frequencies will reverberate for different amounts of time so you will see that and hear that. And as it gets quieter we will turn up the level on the microphone so it's easier for you to hear. Right, everyone ready? Thank you to the Bannerman Group for letting us into the tunnels, to Allan, Alan and Preston for helping with everything here, to Matt Gray who is behind the camera and who's had some musical experiences over on his channel. Go for it. Aagh! That is terrifying.

Channel: Tom Scott

Views: 4,496,633

Rating: 4.9432902 out of 5

Keywords: tom scott, tomscott, inchindown, invergordon, oil tanks, royal navy, reverberation, echo, amazing places

Id: lLUcOFwZvyY

Length: 3min 28sec (208 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/CanadianGuy116]

Check your volume, we're returning to normal speech.

I love you

[u/Azberg]

Going through that narrow pipe to get into? Nope

[u/IAM_Deafharp_AMA]

What no halo theme? Wasted opportunity

[u/cench]

Matt's video from same location

Behind the Scenes from Matt and Tom

[u/Spacecwb0y117]

Why in the hell did they not shout “HELLO!!”

[u/daviator88]

I'm so angry no one just shouted so I could hear what that sounds like. Scream "Penis!" like anyone else would!

[u/cench]

I am almost sure that's the time machine from 12 Monkeys.

[u/Mega__Maniac]

Technically this is the worlds longest reverberation, not the worlds longest echo.

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That's right. I can read the Youtube description.

[u/boristheadventurer]

Wanna know something neat? People have made impulse responses for the Inchindown oil tanks, so you too can apply ludicrous amounts of reverb to your own productions— no airfare necessary!