When my wife and I visited Kyoto a few years ago, we stopped at Niji-Jo, a 17th Century castle built by the first Tokugawa Shugun. Part of the castle has "Uguisu-Bari" of "Nightingale Floors" — wood floors specifically designed to squeak with every step, ensuring that no one could sneak up on the Shogun without alerting his bodyguards.
I don't think that the floors in our 1911 house here in Seattle were necessarily designed with the same goal in mind, but they do seem to serve the purpose of alerting the Shogun to our activities in the dead of night...
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