ABSTRACT
To begin with, there is the hypothetical physics that marks the emergence of modem acoustics, a term that was used by various seventeenth-century writers in connection with sound.2 But it was Isaac Barrow, in 1664, rather than Joseph Sauveur, in 1701, who first suggested that 'a new Part of Mathematics' be 'celebrated by the Name of Acustics'.3 Although this field of investigation predated its name, what distinguished it from scholastic natural philosophy was deliberate experimentation, as in Mersenne's blast-timing experiments or in Boyle's air-pump experiments. In some instances, this new empirical approach led to the quantitative expression of correlations, including those between frequency and pitch of a musical interval, pressure and density of the 'air', stress and strain of a spiral spring, wavelength and length of a pipe.
