This is a digital archive that provides access to and context for unique sources in the rich history of acoustics, tracing the various intersections of sound and science. Search the hundreds of items in the database by using the Search function at the top of this page. Browse individual entries using filters and tags and following up Related objects. Discover the fascinating histories of sound and science by exploring categories, or read about them in the contributor essays. Materials in the database have been collected and curated by members of the Max Planck Research Group "Epistemes of Modern Acoustics" in close collaboration with experts at Humboldt University Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, IRCAM in Paris/New York University and Ingenium: Canada’s Museum of Sciences and Innovation in Ottawa. Do you have materials to contribute and comments to share, or would you like to collaborate? Do get in touch!
Selected Essays & Collection Profiles
Media Archaeological Fundus
by Nikita Braguinski
The Media Archaeological Fundus (Medienarchäologischer Fundus, or MAF) is a collection of teaching and working materials held at the media theory department of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The MAF is a valuable source for historians of acoustics because of the range of mechanical and electronic devices that it contains, along with its special focus on operability and technological functioning. [...]
Historical Devices Owned by the Audio Communication Group, Technische Universität Berlin
by Nikita Braguinski
The holdings of the Audio Communication Group of the Technische Universität Berlin (TU) go back to the 1950s and 1960s. This is a considerable length of time, given the speed of developments in audio technology, which has advanced from analog to digital formats and is now increasingly encompassing algorithmic approaches. The devices I will describe here, now kept in a TU basement, are no longer used [...]
Material from the private estate of Anton Marian Springer
by Fabian Voigtschild, Jonathan Sterne and Mara Mills
The collection was digitized by Fabian Voigtschild, Jonathan Sterne, and Mara Mills. The set features a collection of material from the papers of sound engineer Anton Springers. The collection includes photographs, documents such as Springer’s contract with Eltro GmbH and an original patent document from the United States, and fourteen gramophone records owned by Springer, most of them published [...]
Koenig Acoustical Collection
by David Pantalony, Erich Weidenhammer and Victoria Fisher
The University of Toronto acoustics collection consists of a comprehensive series of instruments made in the Parisian workshop of Rudolph Koenig (1832–1901). Koenig was both an innovative instrument maker, prolific experimenter, and a major influence in the founding of modern experimental acoustics in physics and psychology. His work straddled artisanal traditions in musical instrument making [...]
Max Osswald Photographs
by Max Osswald Photographs
Gathered by historian of architecture Sabine von Fischer, this set consists of sound photographs taken by Franz Max Osswald, the founder of the first laboratory for the study applied acoustics at ETH in Zurich, ca. 1930. These photographs, which are now finally archived in ETH’s image library, demonstrate how the non-visual senses claimed a presence in photography’s presumed visual objectivity. [...]
Doegen collection at Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
by Doegen collection at Deutsches Historisches Museum
The Doegen collection at the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) in Berlin comprises manuscripts, photographs, handwritten notes, brochures, and official documents from the estate of, or connected with, Wilhelm Doegen. They were digitized and kindly provided by the Deutsches Historisches Museum. Some copies of Doegen’s early recordings were purchased by the museum and digitized [...]
Midcentury Electronic Musical Instrument Design: The Hugh Le Caine Collection
by Tom Everrett and Gayle Young
The Hugh Le Caine Collection consists of twenty-two electronic music instruments and related artifacts representing Le Caine’s work as a physicist, instrument designer, and composer in Ottawa, Canada. The collection is held by Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation. Ingenium oversees three of Canada’s national museums: Canada Science and Technology Museum, Canada Aviation [...]
Breaking Glasses and Shattering Myths: Sound and Science in Seventeenth - Century Europe
by Leendert van der Miesen
Early modern science is often described as a visual endeavor, based on new strategies and technologies of visual observation. But a wide variety of sounds attracted equally broad scientific attention. Scholars, natural philosophers, and mathematicians investigated and experimented with sound and musical instruments and developed theories of hearing. Within scientific academies, such as the Royal Society [...]
Noise Screen and Ghost Images: Acoustic Borderlands at Frankfurt Airport
by Susanne Bauer, Nils Güttler and Martina Schlünder
At Frankfurt Airport a large gray concrete wall dominates the area near the gate to the airport’s cargo facilities (Fig. 1). Cars, logistics vans, and employees arriving by bus pass through this gate on their way to the logistics buildings and apron. The massive construction—15 meters high, 2.6 kilometers long—is reminiscent of a medieval city wall but has nothing to do with airport security. [...]
Temporalizing Space through Sound and Movement: the Günter Tembrock protocols on fox behavior
by Sophia Gräfe and Alexandra Hui
In 1948, Günter Tembrock (1918–2011) established the Forschungsstätte für Tierpsychologie (Research Centre for Animal Psychology), which would become an important nexus for behavioral biology in the GDR. As director of the Zoological Institute at Humboldt University of Berlin, Tembrock oversaw the establishment of the Tierstimmen (animal sound) collection. Under Tembrock’s leadership, this [...]
