Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.10896

    Sound experiment

    Date
    1859
    Creator
    Somerville Scott Alison (1813 - 1877, British) , Physician
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (drawing): 180mm
    width (drawing): 112mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    Sketch of an experiment to detect the ticking of a pocket watch using an Alison differential stethoscope. The stethoscope tubes are suspended in glasses of air and water on either side of the timepiece. Alison’s experiment demonstrated that water augmented faint sounds.

    Unpublished figure 3 from the manuscript paper “The intensification of sound through solid bodies by the interposition of water between them & the distal extremity of hearing tubes”, by Somerville Scott Alison. Abstracted in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol.9 (1857-1859), pp.649-651. Not signed.

    Somerville Scott Alison (1813-1877) was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and an expert on diseases of the heart and lungs.
    Associated place
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