This Strange Room Holds a Quiet Secret

— -- Inside the unassuming headquarters of Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis is a strange looking room with deafening silence.

Called an anechoic chamber, the room held the Guinness World Record for quietest place in the world for nearly a decade. Inside the room, all the surfaces -- walls, floor and ceiling -- are covered by three-foot long fiberglass wedges that absorb nearly all sound waves.

While the novelty of the room is interesting in and of itself, the room also serves a practical purpose. Orfield Laboratories is a research facility, and they use their anechoic chamber to test products that emit noise, like speakers, and receive noise, like microphones.

By having a virtually silent room to conduct the tests in, they can ensure that they are testing based on their test sound and nothing else.