Seismology’s acoustic debt: Robert Mallet, Chladni’s figures, and the Victorian science of earthquakes

ABSTRACT

In the nineteenth century, Ernst Chladni’s acoustic figures provided productive new experimental techniques for investigating natural phenomena. The movement of invisible forces, such as light, electricity, magnetism, and heat, were hard for natural philosophers to examine. But Chladni’s use of vibrating glass plates and sand to reveal the wave motions of sound offered an experimental framework through which to make natural phenomena visible. In Britain, it was Michael Faraday and Charles Wheatstone in the 1820s and 1830s who made best use of these practices and apparatus. Sound waves also provided new ways of thinking about earthquakes and seismic phenomena. This article explores how Robert Mallet, the first self-styled “seismologist”, examined earthquakes, drawing on broader philosophical work surrounding vibrations and acoustic waves. Mallet was keen to draw parallels between the movement of seismic shock waves and the movement of musical sounds, including those from a piano moving through a room. He was not alone in this respect. Charles Darwin, among others, noticed comparisons between the sonorous and the seismic. By contextualising Victorian seismology within the context of Victorian acoustic science, this article argues that the two disciplines were deeply connected.

KEYWORDS:

• Earthquakes
• Robert Mallet
• Charles Darwin
• acoustics
• Chladni
• Victorian

Acknowledgments

This article was generously funded by the ERC as part of the ‘Sound and Materialism in the Nineteenth Century’ research project. Thanks go to my exceptional colleagues David Trippett, Melissa Van Drie, Melle Kromhout, Veronika Lorenser, and Stephanie Probst for all their support and constructive input. I am grateful to the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, Cambridge Music Faculty, Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library, the Institution of Civil Engineers Library, the Royal Institution Library, King’s College London Library, Edinburgh University Centre for Research Collections, and the Wren Library at Trinity College. I have benefitted from two kind reviewers at Sound Studies and must thank the journal’s editor, Veit Erlmann, for his patience with my revisions. Finally, thanks are due to China’s high-speed railway network for the discomfort of their sleeper carriages which meant I had several long nights to write this, combined with a new-found appreciation for terrestrial vibrations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For example, see Pesic (2014, 214–215); Lockhart (2016).

2. For a history of light, see Cantor (1984); Pearce Williams (1965, 178).

3. For example, see Herschel (1830, 752-3); Somerville (1834, 146, 250–2).

4. Dean (1991, 40 and 44); on British seismology, see Musson (2013); also see, Musson (2004); on the history of seismology, see Davison (1978).

5. On Chladni see, Jackson (2006, 13–44); Tkaczyk (2015).

6. Wheatstone (1879); also see, Jackson (2016).

7. Wheatstone (1879, 73 and 81); Krehl (2009, 287); for a revealing comparison with Hermann Helmholtz and Richard Wagner’s contrasting use of the ocean to represent the motions of musical sounds, see Trippett (2013, 387–391).

8. Notes on these can be found in Royal Institution Archives (RI), MS F/4/C, ‘Friday Evenings, 1825-1829ʹ; RI MS F/4/K, ‘Friday Evenings, 1829-1831ʹ.

9. Pesic (2014, 198, 213); Tweney (1992a, 151–3); Tweney (1985, 205); Tweney (1992b, 33–6); on Faraday’s visual reasoning and electromagnetism, see Gooding (2006).

10. King’s College London Archives, Wheatstone 5, “Lecture IV” in “Various: 8 lectures on sound”, (c.1835).

11. Rudwick (2004); online edn, May 2012 [http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2204/view/article/17243, accessed 23 August 2018]; Rudwick (2008, 553); Lyell (1834); on the sensation which Lyell’s work caused, see Secord (2014, 3); for examples of the radical impact of science at this time, see Secord (2000, 11–13).

12. Boase (2004); online edn, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17890, accessed 17 October 2018].

13. Herries Davies (1982, 35–6, 41); (Anon.), “Robert Mallet, F. R. S.”, Nature, 17 November 1881 (London, England), p. 59.

14. Herries Davies (1982, 62); it is worth comparing this with the work of the naval architect John Scott Russell on the movements of waves through water, see Russell (1885).

15. https://www.britannica.com/science/primary-wave; thanks to the kind reviewer at Sound Studies for this brilliant observation.

16. Darwin quoted in, Mallet (1848, 54–5); on Darwin’s observations of the earthquake, see White (2012); the same effect was observed on the Marcus Aurelius column in Rome, completed in 193 AD and subjected to centuries of seismic agency, as modelled in Boschi et al. (1995).

17. Savart (1829); (Anon.), ‘On the structure of metals, by Savart’ (1830).

18. Correspondence relative to railway passing through Greenwich Park, 1834–1846, Parliamentary Paper (PP) 1846: 375, p. 4.

19. Discussed in Gillin (forthcoming).

20. Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives, Cambridge University Library (CUL), RGO/6/47, “G. B. Airy to Charles Wood” (4 February 1836), pp. 173–6.

21. (Anon.), “London and Gravesend Railway Company”, The Times, (London, England), 20 November 1834; pg. 1; Issue 15,640 (Anon.), “Railways”, The Morning Post, (London, England), 21 May 1834; Issue 19,797; PP 1846: 375, p. 16 (Anon.), “The new projected railways”, The Times, (London, England), 18 January 1845; pg. 5; Issue 18,824; also see, Airy (1896, 178–9).

22. CUL RGO/6/50, “Wilfrid Airy to G. B. Airy” (28 March 1863), pp. 276–8; CUL RGO/6/50, “G. B. Airy to Alfred Austin” (28 March 1863), pp. 273–4; CUL RGO/6/50, “G. B. Airy to Clarence Paget” (24 February 1865), pp. 372–3.

23. CUL RGO/6/50, “Experiments made in Ireland, 27 May 1865 and May 28 – on the tremor produced by Railway trains, and on the effect of packing-up with bog-peat in diminishing the tremors, by E. J. Stone” (3 June 1865), pp. 469–77.

24. Herschel (1849); there is a wealth of historical literature on Victorian expedition science which is brilliantly reviewed in, Naylor and Schaffer (2019).

25. Mallet (1849, 196); this clearly invokes the Greenwich railway controversy explored in, Gillin (forthcoming).

26. Mallet (1862b); explored in Ferrari and McConnell (2005, 45–64).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the H2020 European Research Council [638241].

Notes on contributors

Edward J. Gillin

Edward J. Gillin is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Britain. His monograph ‘The Victorian Palace of science: scientific knowledge and the building of the Houses of Parliament’ (Cambridge, 2017) was named proxime accessit for the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize in 2018. He is currently completing a second monograph, ‘Sound Authorities: scientific and musical knowledge in nineteenth-century Britain’, which explores the relationship between science and music in Victorian Britain.