Roland Wittje

The electrical imagination: sound analogies, equivalent circuits, and the rise of electroacoustics, 1863-1939

The transformation of acoustics into electroacoustics in the early twentieth century was brought about by at least two significant changes in the mechanical world of acoustics. Electrical technologies entered the acoustics laboratory and profoundly changed the research practices therein. At the same time, electrodynamic theory and electric circuit design advanced rapidly to replace mechanical conceptions as the explanatory basis for the physical sciences. Equivalent-circuit diagrams facilitated a reductionist representation as well as the design of real circuits for electric generation and manipulation of sound by translating acoustic problems into electric systems. Consequently, electroacoustics became more than a research technology and evolved from a laboratory practice into a new way of thinking and talking about sound.

Reading Artifacts: Historische Sammlungen und innovative Konzepte in der Lehre

Universitatshistorische Sammlungen bieten viele Moglichkeiten fur innovative Lehrveranstaltungen in den unterschiedlichsten Disziplinen. Sie eignen sich besonders fur interdisziplinare Lehrveranstaltungen und ermoglichen eine Kommunikation zwischen textorientierten und materiellen Kulturen an den

Concepts and Significance of Noise in Acoustics: Before and after the Great War

Historians of science, technology and medicine have looked at noise in the interwar period in the context of the anti-noise movement, public hygiene and the modern city. I offer a different view, drawing upon distinctions in German between “Lärm,” “Geräusch,” and “Rauschen,” which all translate into “noise” in English. I argue that at least three historical developments altered the concept and significance of noise within science: the deployment of acoustics and acousticians in the Great War, the rise of electroacoustics and media technologies such as telephony and radio broadcasting, and the emergence of comparative musicology.

Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig's Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth Century Paris

could, ultimately, explain the origin of the human mind renewed the challenge of materialism that had been stifled in the previous century. Harman’s story ends*if end it can*with the tension between the Darwinian worldview and Ruskin’s strident efforts to defend the creativity of the human imagination from the stultifying influence of those who saw it as completely subject to rational analysis along materialistic lines. This brief overview of Harman’s account may seem unnecessary, but his book’s power arises from its scope, and it is important to give potential readers some idea of that scope. We will all learn something from this book*I found the account of colour-theory, for instance, completely new to me. The problem is that many historians of science will also find much that covers ground they already know. But this is the penalty imposed on any author who tries to work with so wide a canvas. The book will be invaluable to those teaching courses on the history of science and culture, although it would be hard going for all but senior students and it isn’t always the best guide to more specialised literature. Readers coming from outside the history of science will, I am sure, find new resources here which will encourage them to take the history of science seriously as part of cultural history. If they do, we will all owe Harman a considerable debt for whetting their appetites.