What Is a Whispering Gallery?
The possibilities of an echo have to be taken into account by the architects and builders of all public buildings, such as theaters, halls and churches, where anyone is to speak or entertain others. Unless they are very careful the walls and ceilings may be so arranged that when any one sings or speaks in the room, there is such an echo that it interferes with the music or speaking. It sometimes happens also that through some peculiarity in which the walls and ceiling of a building are constructed there will be certain places in the room where an echo can be heard, even a whisper, and which cannot be heard in other parts of the room at all. This is likely to occur in rooms where there is a dome-shaped ceiling. There will be certain spots in the room hundreds of feet apart, where if you stand on one spot and another person is on another definite spot clear across the room, the tiniest whisper can be heard, while the people in between cannot hear at all. This is called a whispering gallery. Of course, loud talking would produce the same effect. A whispering gallery is a gallery with an echo which can be heard from certain positions. There are a number of famous whispering galleries of the world. In the room beneath the great dome of our Capitol at Washington is an almost perfect whispering gallery. There are quite a number of points at which you can stand and hear the whispers across the room which is more than a hundred feet. These whispering galleries come accidentally, of course. It would be difficult to deliberately construct a building in such a way as to produce a whispering gallery.