An isolation booth is a device used to prevent a person or people from seeing or hearing certain events. On game shows, the isolation booth might be used to prevent contestants from hearing the other player's answers (such as on Twenty One, Family Feud, Win Ben Stein's Money, 50 Grand Slam, The $64,000 Challenge, and the CBS version of Double Dare), from hearing the audience (The $64,000 Question, The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime), from seeing moves or plays made by a player (Whew!, Solitary) or sometimes for comedic effect only (Idiot Savants). On The Money List, the players in a booth are only isolated when the booth is red.
Isolation booths are also frequently used in audio recordings, with non-reflective walls, lined with acoustic foam that eliminate potential reverberations.
Famous quotes containing the words isolation and/or booth:
“The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“A man’s labour is not only his capital but his life. When it passes it returns never more. To utilise it, to prevent its wasteful squandering, to enable the poor man to bank it up for use hereafter, this surely is one of the most urgent tasks before civilisation.”
—William Booth (1829–1912)