The term Whispering Gallery Wave was coined by John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) in 1878 after he dispelled a common misconception that you could hear whispers from across the room in any part of the dome at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Strutt, an English physicist and pioneer in the field of interaural audio dynamics, found that sound waves traveled along the edge of the smooth surface of the arch of the dome without dissipating as they would in air, hence arriving at a listener's ear placed near the smooth edge of the arch on the opposite side of the dome with much the same volume as when they left the speaker's mouth. 

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