According to University of Illinois Professor Floyd Rowe Watson in his 1922 book "Sound Proof Partitions," little was known about soundproofing before 1915, and various trial-and-error methods were attempted.
State and federal governments have funded the construction of noise barriers to new and existing highways since the 1970s to lessen the effects of traffic noise on nearby residents.
With the advent of overdubbing in the 1960s, the need for musicians to be able to see each other and play all the parts on one take disappeared, leading to the evolution of soundproof isolation chambers in which there was no leakage of noise from the other instruments.
A fire broke out at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, on Feb. 20, 2003, killing 100 people. It was caused by pyrotechnics that ignited the club's soundproofing foam.
According to a June 2009 Egg Heaven article, companies have created vinyl paint technologies that can reduce sound by 30 percent to 50 percent from both inside and outside of a room.