Collection Profiles
This page presents various digitized collections in the history of acoustics, including material from particular archives, collections, or companies. In some cases, these are digitized private collections or archives that are difficult to access. In other cases, we have digitized a small selection of objects from relevant collections and link here to the finding aids or databases of the respective collection.
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. [...]
February 28, 2023
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 [...]
February 14, 2023
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 [...]
January 17, 2023
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 [...]
January 10, 2023
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. [...]
December 13, 2022
Doegen collection at Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
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 [...]
December 6, 2022
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 [...]
July 12, 2022
