Sympathetic vibration
Date
14 March 1677
Creator
John Wallis (1616 - 1703, British) , Mathematician
Object type
Archive reference number
Manuscript page number
p2
Material
Dimensions
height (page): 306mm
width (page): 196mm
width (page): 196mm
Subject
Description
Diagrams explaining sympathetic vibration in a letter from John Wallis dated 14 March 1677. It was read to the Royal Society on 22 March 1677, and printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 12, no. 134 (1677).
Object history
At the meeting of 22 March 1677, ‘Mr. Oldenburg read a letter to himself from Dr. Wallis, dated at Oxford, 14 March 1676/6, concerning a new musical observation, viz. that whereas it hath long since been observed, that if a viol or lute-string be touched, another string on the same or another instrument not far from it, if an unison to it, or an octave, will at the same time tremble of its own accord; it hath been farther noted, that not the whole of that other string doth thus tremble, but the several parts severally, according as they are unions to the whole or the parts of that string: and besides, that the same string being struck in the midst, each part being unison to the other will give no clear sound at all, but very confused, etc. This experiment was in part tried, and found to answer the import of the letter’ (Birch 3:337).
Printed in John Wallis, ‘Concerning a new musical discovery’, in Phil. Trans., vol. 12, no. 134 (April 1677), pp. 839-41 (p. 840).
Printed in John Wallis, ‘Concerning a new musical discovery’, in Phil. Trans., vol. 12, no. 134 (April 1677), pp. 839-41 (p. 840).
Related fellows
Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
Associated place