I know a consulting acoustical engineer who tracks down noise problems for companies and individuals. He goes on about the difficulty of even finding the source of low-frequency noise because of distance and vague directionality. In an extreme case, a rural family was tormented by a constant throbbing sound that turned out to be from a utility station 5 miles away.

Loud low sounds can travel very far, especially at night when it’s quiet. I can hear freight trains at night that are over 5 miles away. It wouldn’t surprise me if the beam engine was louder than a freight train, and that nights were even quieter in the early 20th century. Hundreds of miles is a bit much though.

Now we live in obnoxiously loud cities with 24/7 emergency vehicle sirens (hey! there's an emergency somewhere!), loud aircraft flying overhead at all hours, loud low-frequency rumbling from ground vehicles, jet engines, power plants, and all manner of machinery, loud hums from electrical equipment, etc.

Unsurprisingly, this disturbs many people's sleep.

Moving outside of cities doesn't even solve the problem because low frequency noise travels for miles, highways go everywhere, and aircraft are inescapable.

And the EPA has simply abandoned any attempt to regulate noise pollution.

Something similar happened in more modern times with a cell tower, although it's over a decade ago now: https://gizmodo.com/locals-complain-of-radio-tower-illness-t...

I should add that it was not the sound that was disturbing them, these engines were sometimes on the other side of the country. It was the "unnatural", unending reciprocating motion of the things!

> Of course they only started having this problem after reading about such contraptions in newspapers.

Sadly the memories of having worked with the machines persists