Alfred M. Mayer and Acoustics in Nineteenth-Century America

Summary

Througout the nineteenth century, acoustics or the science of sound in America lagged behind European acoustics which had been rapidly advancing. During this period, the American physicist Alfred M. Mayer made original contributions to acoustics and earned a reputation in Europe, filling a gap in late nineteenth-century American research in acoustics. Lacking fellowship with American acousticians, he was affiliated with the European community of research in acoustics in various respects such as taking up themes of research, employing experimental instruments, learning the practice of research, and adopting specific theories for research. In addition, he tried to naturalise acoustics on American soil by applying expertise to practical problems and creating specialised experimental setups for acoustics education in America. But his research was not taken advantage of by the next generation of American acousticians, who focused on practical technologies such as telephony, the control of noise, and underwater acoustics.

Acknowledgements

This thesis was supported by the research funding of Youngsan University. I am very grateful to Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Curtis Wilson and Penelope Gouk for their valuable comments and encouragement. I would like to thank, for supplying the sources for this research, the Archives and Records Management, E.S. Bird Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Princeton University Library, Princeton, NY, the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN and the Library Archives and Special Collections, Imperial College London, London, UK.

Notes

¹Ja Hyon Ku, ‘British Acoustics and Its Transformation from the 1860s to the 1910s’, Annals of Science 63 (2006), 396–423 (412–6).

²Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham & London, 2003), 185–214.

³For example, the American acoustician Robert Beyer in his book fails to give a just account of Mayer's accomplishments, and the American historian Emily Thompson in her book gives a synopsis of nineteenth-century acoustics with emphasis on architectural acoustics, but makes no mention of Mayer. Robert T. Beyer, Sounds of Our Time: Two Hundred Years in Acoustics (New York, 1999); Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, 1999), 18–33.

⁴Ku (note 1), pp. 421–3.

⁵Steven Vogel, ‘Sensation of Tone, Perception of Sound, and Empiricism: Helmholtz's Physical Acoustics’, in Hermann von Helmholtz and the Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Science, edited by David Cahan (Berkeley, 1993), 261.

⁶Beyer (note 3), pp. 2–4.

⁷Ernst Heinrich Weber and Wilhelm Weber, Wellenlehre, auf Experimente gegründet oder über die Wellen tropfbarer Flüssigkeiten mit Anwendung auf die Schall- und Lichtwellen (Leipzig, 1825).

⁸Ku (note 1), pp. 399–407; Ja Hyon Ku, ‘19 segi eumhyanghag-gwa eumag-ui gyogam’ (The Sympathy between Acoustics and Music in the Nineteenth Century) (in Korean), Ewha Music Journal 11, no. 2 (2007), 81–102 (85–6).

⁹In the German context, Myles Jackson shows the interactions between the three groups in detail in his treatise. Myles Jackson, Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2006).

¹⁰Beyer (note 3), p. 28.

¹¹R.B. Lindsay, ‘Historical Introduction’, in Baron John William Strutt Rayleigh, The Theory of Sound, 2 vols. (New York, 1945), vol. 1, xiv; Beyer (note 3), pp. 13–4.

¹²Ku (note 1), pp. 412–7.

¹³Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Commnunity in Modern America (Cambridge, 1995), 34–8.

¹⁴Benjamin Peirce, An Elementary Treatise on Sound (Boston, 1836).

¹⁵Karen Hunger Parshall and David E. Rowe, The Emergence of American Mathematical Research Community, 1876–1900: J. J. Sylvester, Felix Klein, E. H. Moore (Providence, 1997), 8.

¹⁶Harvey W. Becher, ‘Radicals, Whigs, and Conservatives: the Middle and Lower Classes in the Analytical Revolution at Cambridge in the Age of Aristocracy’, British Journal of History of Science 28 (1993), 405–26.

¹⁷Parshall and Rowe (note 15), pp. 9, 17. Bowditch added three pages of comments to every two of the original. John Pickering, ‘Eulogy on Dr. Bowditch, President of the American Academy’, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2 (1846), i–lxi (xlii, xllx).

¹⁸Nathan Reingold, ed. Science in Nineteenth Century America: A Documentary History (Chicago, 1985), 11–25; Pickering (note 17), p. liv.

¹⁹Pickering (note 17), pp. 33–40.

²⁰Thompson (note 3), pp. 24–32.

²¹Walter Le Conte Stevens, A Sketch of Prof. John Le Conte: Sensitive Flames and Sound-Shadows (New York, 1889), 6–8.

²²John Tyndall, Sound (New York, 1969), 257–71; David Pantalony, Altered Senstions: Rudolph Koenig's Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris (New York, 2009), 372; A. F. Barrett, ‘On Sensitive Flames’, The Popular Science Review 6 (1867), 154–66.

²³John Le Conte, ‘On the Adequacy of Laplace's Explanation to Account for the Discrepancy between the Computed and the Observed Velocity of Sound in Air and Gases’, Philosophical Magazine 27 (1864), 1–32.

²⁴John Le Conte, ‘On Sound-Shadows in Water’, Philosophical Magazine 13 (1882), 98–112.

²⁵Stevens (note 21), pp. 15–6.

²⁶Le Conte (note 24), p. 99.

²⁷Beyer (note 3), pp. 104–8.

²⁸Beyer (note 3), p. 106. Willem Hackmann, Seek and Strike: Sonar, Anti-submarine Warfare and the Royal Navy 1914–54 (London, 1984), 3–4.

²⁹A.S. Eve and C.H. Creasey, Life and Work of John Tyndall (London, 1945), 172.

³⁰Dayton Clarence Miller, Anecdotal History of the Science of Sound: To the Beginning of the 20 ^th Century (New York, 1935), 81–2.

³¹Kevles (note 13), p. 15.

³²Rudolf Koenig, ‘Note Concerning the Large Acoustic Instruments Exhibited by Dr. Rudolf König, of Paris, at the Centennial Exhibition of Philadelphia, 1876’, S.P. Thompson Collection, the Institution of Electrical Engineers Archive, Savoy Place, London.

³³Pantalony (note 22), p. 124.

³⁴Pantalony (note 22). p. 125.

³⁵George Barker to Koenig, 1 June 1877. S.P. Thompson Collections, IEE Archive, London.

³⁶Barker to Koenig, 4 June 1878 and 15 December 1879. S.P. Thompson Collections, IEE Archive, London.

³⁷Barker to Koenig, 30 June 1882, S.P. Thompson Collections, IEE Archive, London.

³⁸Koenig (note 32), The part of the tonometer installed at West Point was housed in the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Pantalony (note 22), p. 109.

³⁹For representative works, see John Brooks, Telephone: The First Hundred Years (New York, 1975); Jonathan Sterne (note 2); David Morton, Off the Record: The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America (New Brunswick & London, 2000); James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity (New York, 2000); Andre Millard, America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound (Cambridge, 1995); Claude S. Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley, 1992).

⁴⁰John E. Kingsbury, The Telephone and Telephone Exchange: Their Invention and Development (New York, 1915).

⁴¹The question who invented the telephone has been much discussed. Among the better known of those for whom priority claims have been made were Phillip Reis and Elisha Gray, but many other less well-known inventors devised apparatus for transmitting human voices electrically. It is not clear who first succeeded in transmitting recognisable human articulation electrically. Bell's claim was, not that he had invented the telephone, but that he had modified the apparatus advantageously. Valuable information about the inventors of the telephone is scattered and includes the following. S. Garner, The Telephone: Its History, Construction, Principles, and Uses, with Definitive Instructions on the Making of Telephones, and to Which is Added a Chapter on the Phonograph (London, 1878); Count Du Moncel, The Telephone, the Microphone, and the Phonograph (New York, 1879); S.P. Thompson, Philipp Reis: Inventor of the Telephone (London, 1883); John Brooks (note 39); D.A. Hounshell, ‘Elisha Gray and the Telephone: On the Disadvantages of Being an Expert’, Technology and Culture 16 (1975), 133–61; Lewis Coe, The Telephone and Its Several Inventors: A History, 2^nd ed. (Jefferson, 2006); Ja Hyon Ku, ‘Reis-ui jeonhwagi balmyeong-gwa tonghwa eumjil munje’ (The Invention of the Reis Telephone and the Problem of its Speech Quality) (in Korean), Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea 29 (2010), 395–401.

⁴²Roland Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph 1877–1977, 2^nd rev. ed. (London, 1977), 17–9; Andre Millard, America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound (Cambridge, 1995), 17–36; David Morton (note 39), pp. 1–2; The best technical history of the phonograph can be found in Oliver Read and Walter L. Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: The Evolution of the Phonograph (Indianapolis, 1977).

⁴³Garner (note 41), pp. 30–2.

⁴⁴Joseph F. Mulligan ‘Physics and Fly-Fishing: The Remarkable Career of Baltimore's Alfred Marshall Mayer 1836-1897’, Maryland Historical Magazines 98 (2: Summer 2003), 173–85 (176).

⁴⁵Famous for his original research in Europe, Rowland deplored the lack of intellectual pursuit and the concentration upon practicality in the American physical community. Helge Kragh, Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1999), 15. Although Joseph F. Mulligan recently wrote a biographical paper on Mayer, he did not pay deserved attention to Mayer's original research in acoustics except his work on residual sensation of hearing. Mulligan (note 44), pp. 176, 182.

⁴⁶Alfred G. Mayer and Robert S. Woodward, Biographical Memoir of Alfred Marshall Mayer 1836–1897 (Washington, 1916), 243–4.

⁴⁷Mayer and Woodward (note 46), p. 245.

⁴⁸Mulligan (note 44), p. 173.

⁴⁹Mulligan (note 44), p. 174.

⁵⁰A.M. Mayer, ‘A New Carbonic Apparatus’, American Journal of Science and Arts 19 (1855), 422.

⁵¹Robert Fox, Caloric Theory of Gases: From Lavoisier to Regnault (Oxford, 1971), 299.

⁵²Mulligan (note 44), p. 175.

⁵³Mayer and Woodward (note 46), pp. 248–9.

⁵⁴A.M. Mayer, ‘On the Thermo-dynamics of Waterfalls’, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Salem meeting (1869), 64–9.

⁵⁵A.M. Mayer, ‘On a Precise Method of Tracing the Progress and of Determining the Boundary of a Conducted Heat’, American Journal of Science and Arts 4 (1872), 37–40.

⁵⁶Mulligan (note 44), p. 176.

⁵⁷A.M. Mayer, ‘A Note on Experiments with Floating Magnets; Showing the Motions and Arrangements in a Plane of Freely Moving Bodies, Acted on by Forces of Attraction and Repulsion; and Serving in the Study of the Direction and Motions of the Lines of Magnetic Force’, American Journal of Science and Arts 15 (1872), 276–7.

⁵⁸H.A.M. Snelders, ‘A.M. Mayer's Experiments with Floating magnets and Their Use in the Atomic Theories of Matter’, Annals of Science 33 (1976), 67–80 (70).

⁵⁹Snelders (note 58), p. 69.

⁶⁰Alexander J. Ellis, ‘Additions by the Translator’, in Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone as Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (Helmholtz wrote the book. Ellis translated it and added ‘Additions by the Translator’ among the Appendices in its end (New York, 1954), 442; Alexander J. Ellis, ‘The History of Musical Pitch’, Journal of the Society of Arts (March, 1880), 293–404 (299).

⁶¹Ku (note 1), p. 410.

⁶²Pantalony (note 22), p. 84.

⁶³Matthias Dörries, ‘Purity and Objectivity in Nineteenth-Century Metrology and Literature’, Perspectives on Science 9 (2001), 233–50 (238).

⁶⁴A.M. Mayer, ‘Researches in Acoustics, No. 9’, The American Journal of Science and Arts 47 (1894), 1–28 (8–9).

⁶⁵Mayer (note 64), pp. 12–3.

⁶⁶Mayer and Woodward (note 46), p. 252.

⁶⁷Helmholtz (note 60), pp. 417–8. John Augustine Zahm, Sound and Music (Chicago, 1892), 423–6.

⁶⁸A.M. Mayer, ‘On a Method of detecting the Phases of Vibration in the Air surrounding a Sounding Body, and thereby measuring directly in the vibrating air the lengths of its Waves and exploring the form of its Wave-surface’, Philosophical Magazine 44 (1872), 321–7.

⁶⁹David A. Pantalony, ‘Analysing Sound in the Nineteenth Century: The Koenig Sound Analyzer’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society 68 (2001), 16–21.

⁷⁰Pantalony (note 22), p. 60.

⁷¹Ja Hyon Ku, ‘Uses and Forms of Instruments: Resonator and Tuning Fork in Rayleigh's Acoustical Experiments’, Annals of Science 66 (2009), 371–95 (373–4, 381–4).

⁷²Ku (note 1), pp. 410–1.

⁷³Mayer to Rayleigh, 7 October 1878. Strutt, John William (1842–1919) 3rd Baron Rayleigh, General Correspondence and Notebooks at the Research Library of the USAF Research Laboratory, Hanscom AFB, Bedford, MA, USA held on microfilm at Library Archives and Special Collections, Imperial College London, London, UK.

⁷⁴Mayer to Rayleigh, 29 March 1878.

⁷⁵Mayer to Rayleigh, 19 October 1894.

⁷⁶Pantalony (note 22), p. 140.

⁷⁷A.M. Mayer, ‘Researches in Acoustics’, American Journal of Science and Arts 1 (1896), 6–30. In July, 1892, Mayer worked with Le Conte Stevens at Koenig's studio. Koenig developed such a close relation with Mayer that Mayer's death in 1897 saddened him profoundly. Pantalony (note 22), p. 142.

⁷⁸A.M. Mayer, ‘On the Production of Beat-Tones from Two Vibrating Bodies Whose Frequencies Are so High as to Hear Separately Inaudible’, Transactions of British Association, Oxford Meeting (1894), 273.

⁷⁹Mayer to Rayleigh, undated letter, which begins with ‘I thank you sincerely for your kind invitation …’

⁸⁰A.M. Mayer, ‘An Experimental Confirmation of Fourier's Theorem as Applied to the Decomposition of the Vibrations of a Composite Sonorous Wave into its Elementary Pendulum-Vibrations’, Philosophical Magazine 48 (1874), 266–74.

⁸¹Helmholtz (note 60), pp. 129–42; Géza Révész, Introduction to the Psychology of Music (New York, 2001), 36–9; Ja Hyon Ku, ‘Helmholtz-ui saengrihag yeongu-ui teugseong-gwa cheonggag-ui gongmyeong iron’ (The Characteristics of Helmholtz's Physiological Research and Resonance Theory of Hearing) (in Korean), Unpublished Master Thesis, Seoul National University, 1995, 40–54.

⁸²Helmholtz (note 60), pp. 145–6.

⁸³Christopher Johnston, ‘Auditory Apparatus of the Culex Mosquito’, The Quarterly Journal of the Microscopical Society of London (1855), 97–102.

⁸⁴A.M. Mayer, ‘Experiments on the supposed Auditory Apparatus of the Culex mosquito’, Philosophical Magazine 48 (1874), 371–85.

⁸⁵A.M. Mayer, ‘Suggestions as to the Function of the Spiral Scalae of the Cochlea, Leading to a Hypothesis of the Mechanism of Audition’, Philosophical Magazine 48 (1874), 445–52.

⁸⁶A.M. Mayer, ‘On an Acoustic Pyrometer’, Philosophical Magazine 45 (1873), 18–22 (18).

⁸⁷Newspaper clipping in Mayer Papers, pp. 328–329, Archives and Records Management, E.S. Bird Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY; A.M. Mayer, ‘On a Method of detecting the Phases of Vibration in the Air surrounding a Sounding Body, and thereby measuring directly in the vibrating air the lengths of its Waves and exploring the form of its Wave-surface’, Philosophical Magazine 44 (1872), 321–7; A.M. Mayer, ‘On a Simple and Precise Method of Measuring the Wave-lengths and Velocities of Sound in Gases; and on an Application of the Method in the Invention of an Acoustic Pyrometer’, American Journal of Science and Arts 4 (1872), 425–30.

⁸⁸Sabrie Soloman, Sensors Handbook (New York, 2009), 647–53.

⁸⁹Ja Hyon Ku, ‘Rayleigh's Acoustical Research on the Fog Signal’, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Acoustics, 23 (3E) (2004), 98–102.

⁹⁰A.M. Mayer, ‘Topophone’, U.S. Patent, No. 224,199. 1880.

⁹¹Mayer and Woodward (note 46), p. 256.

⁹²Ja Hyon Ku, ‘Rayleigh-ui sori-ui banghyang jigag yeongu-e daehan gwahagsajeog gochal’ (A Historical Inquiry about Rayleigh's Research on the Perception of the Direction of Sound) (in Korean), The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea 21 (2002), 695–702; Helmholtz (note 60), pp. 41–5; Rayleigh, ‘On Our Perception of the Direction of a Source of Sound’, Nature 14 (1876), 32–33.

⁹³Thomas A. Edison to A.M. Mayer, 12 February 1878. A.M. Mayer's Collections, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Princeton University Library, Princeton, NY.

⁹⁴Mayer to Edison, 6 March 1878; Edison to Mayer, 20 March 1878.

⁹⁵Mayer to Edison, 9 July 1878.

⁹⁶Mayer to Edison, 9 July 1878.

⁹⁷Edison to Mayer, 27 September 1878. In this letter, we can't find exactly what problem Edison wanted to solve.

⁹⁸Edison to Mayer, 27 September 1878.

⁹⁹A.M. Mayer, ‘On Edison's Talking Machine’, Popular Science Monthly 12 (1878), 719–24.

¹⁰⁰Mayer (note 99), p. 722.

¹⁰¹Mayer (note 99), p. 724.

¹⁰²For example, Silvanus. P. Thompson, ‘On Binaural Audition’, Philosophical Magazine 25 (1877), 274–6.

¹⁰³Brown Ayres to Alexander Graham Bell, 18 May 1916; Brown Ayres Correspondence, 1877–1881, 1916, MS-0284, University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN; for the preservation of the Brown Ayres correspondence, we are no doubt indebted to the fact that Brown Ayres was later president of the University of Tennesee.

¹⁰⁴A.M. Mayer, ‘Lecture Notes on Physics’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 84 (1867) 321–9; Part 2, 85 (1868), 35–44, 113–21; Part 3, 183–96; Part 4, 249–57; Part 5, 328–35, 400–5; 86 (1868), 48–83, 109–19, 177–86, 253–8; Part 6, 336–43.

¹⁰⁵A.M. Mayer, Lecture-Note on Physics (Philadelphia, 1868), 11. Imports of French instruments were made frequently by physicists who were teaching in American universities including Mayer. Pantalony (note 22), pp. 76–7.

¹⁰⁶Pantalony (note 22), p. 19.

¹⁰⁷Benjamin Silliman, Principles of Physics, or Natural Philosophy (New York, 1871).

¹⁰⁸A.M. Mayer, Sound: A Series of Simple, Entertaining, Inexpensive Experiments in the Phenomena of Sound, For the Students of Every Age (New York, 1878). We have to remember that Mayer wrote a similar book about optics. Its purpose of education was the same but it was mainly prepared by his assistant. These series show that Mayer was an excellent educator for physics, who taught students with original materials of experiments. A.M. Mayer and C. Barnard, Light: A Series of Simple, Entertaining, Inexpensive Experiments in the Phenomena of Light, For the Students of Every Age (London, 1878).

¹⁰⁹Thomas McKay, Physical Measurement in Sound, Light, Electricity and Magnetism (San Francisco, 1908), iii; W.C. Sabine, A Student's Manual of a Laboratory Course in Physical Measurement (Boston, 1906), iii, 24–41.

¹¹⁰Zahm (note 67), p. 7.

¹¹¹John Broadhouse, Musical Acoustics or the Phenomena of Sound as Connected with Music (London, 1881), vii.

¹¹²Clarence Hamilton, Sound and Its Relation to Music (Philadelphia, 1912), v.

¹¹³Zahm (note 67), p. 423.

¹¹⁴Pantalony (note 22), p. 77.

¹¹⁵Dayton Clarence Miller, The Science of Musical Sound (Norwood, 1916).

¹¹⁶Miller (note 115), pp. 1–2.

¹¹⁷Miller (note 115), pp. 72–3.

¹¹⁸Beyer (note 3), pp. 186–9.

¹¹⁹Parshall and Rowe (note 15), pp. 21–40.

¹²⁰Kragh (note 39), p. 14–9.

¹²¹We can see one of the first Americanised mathematical acoustics in George Shepardson, Telephone Apparatus: An Introduction to the Development and Theory (New York, 1917). The author, a professor of electric engineering at Minnesota University, emphasised mathematical understanding for telephonic technology, revealing the phase shift of the innovative thrust of the technology from the experimental ground to mathematical theories. Kragh (note 39), p. ix.

¹²²Ku (note 1), pp. 412–7.

¹²³Ku (note 1), pp. 399–404.

¹²⁴In the case of the telephone, Reis’ telephone which was invented in the 1850s prior to Bell's was considered as a scientific achievement by the inventor and his German colleagues. Ku (note 35), pp. 396–7.

¹²⁵W.D. Hackmann, ‘Underwater Acoustics and the Royal Navy, 1893–1930’, Annals of Science 36 (1979), 255–78 (266–7); Jont B. Allen, ‘Harvey Fletcher's Role in the Creation of Communication Acoustics’, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 99 (1996), 1825–39.

¹²⁶Beyer (note 3), pp. 232–3.