Sound and Science

Photographic registration of sounds

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Sound waves: their shape and speed

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Audio Preservationist Carl Haber, 2013 MacArthur Fellow | MacArthur Foundation

video

On Manometric Flames

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Dictaphone dictation machine

The Dictaphone dictation machine is a recording device that resembles the Edison phonograph in its use of wax cylinders as the recording medium. It differs from  [...]

artefacts

Kymograph

The kymograph could create visual representations of measurements carried out over a certain period of time, and played an important role in physiology, acoustics, and other  [...]

artefacts

H.J.L. Struycken

H. J. L. Struycken was a Dutch otolaryngologist, phonetician, and acoustician. After studying medicine in Groningen, in 1893 he started working at the Voorburg psychiatric hospital  [...]

people

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  [...]

collections

Photographic study of sound propagation within convex and concave

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Contact sheet of photographic sound studies

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Image archive / foto: Osswald, Franz Max / Ans_10391-011  [...]

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Photographic study of sound propagation in a cupola space

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Photographic study of sound propagation for an auditorium of variable size  [...]

images

Acoustics laboratory, E.T.H. Zürich: Oscillation chart of the adjacent reverberation room

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Image archive, Inventory-number: Ans_10391-100  [...]

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Acoustics laboratory, E.T.H. Zürich

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Photographic study of sound propagation in Semper’s Stadthaus Winterthur auditorium

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Photographic study of sound propagation for rooms with wood coffering

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Photographic study of sound propagation for an elliptic space with coffering  [...]

Inventory number: Ans_10391-066

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Photographic study of sound propagation with explanatory line drawings

Inventory number: Ans_10391-050

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Photographic study of sound propagation in the Ear of Dionysius

Inventory number: Ans_10391-091

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Franz Max Osswald

Franz Max Osswald, born in Winterthur, graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1905 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (E.T.H.). In 1924, he installed a  [...]

people

Lissajous’s figures, Wheatstone apparatus for compounding two orthogonal oscillations

This video demonstrates the principle of Chladni figures and vibrating plates. Brass plates of different shapes are fixed centrally at the top of wooden columns. Sand is  [...]

video

Recording the vibrations of tuning forks

This video demonstrates the principle of recording the vibrations of tuning forks. A small glass sheet is covered in a layer of black carbon, using the fumes  [...]

video