Introduction
Authors whose work is too extensive to summarize here have dealt with the problem of how the threshold of hearing changes when the stimulus tone is made shorter and shorter. Much is also known about the effect of tone duration upon loudness (of which the threshold is a limiting case). We now have access to copious, though not complete, data on loudness and on threshold as affected by frequency, band width, intensity, duration, and repetition rate, much of it from the recent papers of Garner.2,3Perhaps the major point of theoretical interest in this general area is how and under what conditions the ear integrates energy. In other terms, whether, for any given set of conditions, all the energy present in a stimulus over any period of time is utilized by the ear, or whether some part of that energy is wasted. Energy is wasted if it does