Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14454

    Echo of Rosneath bay

    Date
    3 December 1662
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p266
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 366mm
    width (page): 231mm
    Subject
    Physics
       > Acoustics
    Description
    A map of Rosneath bay and musical notation.

    At a meeting of the Royal Society on 3 December 1662, Robert Moray reported that he got a trumpeter at a low ground, A, facing toward C, a house built of stone, to play eight semibreves for about ten seconds. The first echo appeared to come from between B, a rocky precipice, and C; the second one from around D, a church; and the third echo from between D and E, another church. F is the head of the lake, and H, the ‘fair house’ at Rosneath, outside Glasgow.

    Other versions of this image can be found at RBO/2ii/049, RBO/2i/053, Cl.P/2/34/003-04 and MS/776/253. Another version of the notation without the map can be found at MS/92/043.
    Transcription
    A. is a point of Low Land not 6 foot above the water, at a full sea, whether the beach is at low water pretty steep, like a banck some 15 or 16 foot in hight.

    B. is a Rocky Precipice, some 10 or 20 yards high, esteemed to be a quarter of a Mile distant fro A. and extended in length some 100 or 120 yards woody at Top.

    Etc....
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 3 December 1662, ‘Sir Robert Moray’s account of an echo in Scotland, was read, and his offer of having it more fully inquired into, and more exactly described, was accepted’ (Birch 1:137).
    Related fellows
    Robert Moray (1608 - 1673, British) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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