ABSTRACT

Essentially four different distinctively musical experiments were performed at meetings of the society during the seventeenth century: the use of a very long string to determine the absolute frequency of musical vibrations; the use of a monochord to determine relationships of string length and tension with pitch; the use of a vibrating glass to display patterns of standing waves, and the use of a toothed wheel to demonstrate the relationship between frequency ratios and consonance. Experiments with long strings appeared at the royal society in the summer of 1664, apparently the result of the convergence of three stimuli. The device which the Royal Society described as a monochord had two strings, to facilitate experiments involving the comparison of different pitches, and was therefore strictly a dichord. The next musical experiment to be performed was an elaboration of the well-known device in which the rim of a glass of water is rubbed with a wet finger to produce a tone.