Download or read book The Age of Electroacoustics written by Roland Wittje and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transformation of acoustics into electro-acoustics, a field at the intersection of science and technology, guided by electrical engineering, industry, and the military. At the end of the nineteenth century, acoustics was a science of musical sounds; the musically trained ear was the ultimate reference. Just a few decades into the twentieth century, acoustics had undergone a transformation from a scientific field based on the understanding of classical music to one guided by electrical engineering, with industrial and military applications. In this book, Roland Wittje traces this transition, from the late nineteenth-century work of Hermann Helmholtz to the militarized research of World War I and media technology in the 1930s. Wittje shows that physics in the early twentieth century was not only about relativity and atomic structure but encompassed a range of experimental, applied, and industrial research fields. The emergence of technical acoustics and electroacoustics illustrates a scientific field at the intersection of science and technology. Wittje starts with Helmholtz's and Rayleigh's work and its intersection with telegraphy and early wireless, and continues with the industrialization of acoustics during World War I, when sound measurement was automated and electrical engineering and radio took over the concept of noise. Researchers no longer appealed to the musically trained ear to understand sound but to the thinking and practices of electrical engineering. Finally, Wittje covers the demilitarization of acoustics during the Weimar Republic and its remilitarization at the beginning of the Third Reich. He shows how technical acoustics fit well with the Nazi dismissal of pure science, representing everything that “German Physics” under National Socialism should be: experimental, applied, and relevant to the military.

Download or read book The Age of Electroacoustics written by Roland Wittje and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transformation of acoustics into electro-acoustics, a field at the intersection of science and technology, guided by electrical engineering, industry, and the military. At the end of the nineteenth century, acoustics was a science of musical sounds; the musically trained ear was the ultimate reference. Just a few decades into the twentieth century, acoustics had undergone a transformation from a scientific field based on the understanding of classical music to one guided by electrical engineering, with industrial and military applications. In this book, Roland Wittje traces this transition, from the late nineteenth-century work of Hermann Helmholtz to the militarized research of World War I and media technology in the 1930s. Wittje shows that physics in the early twentieth century was not only about relativity and atomic structure but encompassed a range of experimental, applied, and industrial research fields. The emergence of technical acoustics and electroacoustics illustrates a scientific field at the intersection of science and technology. Wittje starts with Helmholtz's and Rayleigh's work and its intersection with telegraphy and early wireless, and continues with the industrialization of acoustics during World War I, when sound measurement was automated and electrical engineering and radio took over the concept of noise. Researchers no longer appealed to the musically trained ear to understand sound but to the thinking and practices of electrical engineering. Finally, Wittje covers the demilitarization of acoustics during the Weimar Republic and its remilitarization at the beginning of the Third Reich. He shows how technical acoustics fit well with the Nazi dismissal of pure science, representing everything that “German Physics” under National Socialism should be: experimental, applied, and relevant to the military.

Download or read book Tuning the World written by Fanny Gribenski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-01-26 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tuning the World tells the unknown story of how the musical pitch A 440 became the global norm. Now commonly accepted as the point of reference for musicians in the Western world, A 440 hertz only became the standard pitch during an international conference held in 1939. The adoption of this norm was the result of decades of negotiations between countries, involving a diverse group of performers, composers, diplomats, physicists, and sound engineers. Although there is widespread awareness of the variability of musical pitches over time, as attested by the use of lower frequencies to perform early music repertoires, no study has fully explained the invention of our current concert pitch. In this book, Fanny Gribenski draws on a rich variety of previously unexplored archival sources and a unique combination of musicological perspectives, transnational history, and science studies to tell the unknown story of how A 440 became the global norm. Tuning the World demonstrates the aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and political contingencies underlying the construction of one of the most “natural” objects of contemporary musical performance and shows how this century-old effort was ultimately determined by the influence of a few powerful nations.

Download or read book Science and Sound in Nineteenth Century Britain written by Edward J. Gillin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sound and Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain is a four-volume set of primary sources which seeks to define our historical understanding of the relationship between British scientific knowledge and sound between 1815 and 1900. In the context of rapid urbanization and industrialization, as well as a growing overseas empire, Britain was home to a rich scientific culture in which the ear was as valuable an organ as the eye for examining nature. Experiments on how sound behaved informed new understandings of how a diverse array of natural phenomena operated, notably those of heat, light, and electro-magnetism. In nineteenth-century Britain, sound was not just a phenomenon to be studied, but central to the practice of science itself and broader understandings over nature and the universe. This collection, accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, will be of great interest to students and scholars of the History of Science.

Download or read book Transforming Noise written by Chen-Pang Yeang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-30 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, the concept of noise is employed to characterize random fluctuations in general. Before the twentieth century, however, noise only meant disturbing sounds. In the 1900s-50s, noise underwent a conceptual transformation from unwanted sounds that needed to be domesticated into a synonym for errors and deviations to be now used as all kinds of signals and information. Transforming Noise examines the historical origin of modern attempts to understand, control, and use noise. Its history sheds light on the interactions between physics, mathematics, mechanical technology, electrical engineering, and information and data sciences in the twentieth century. This book explores the process of engineers and physicists turning noise into an informational concept, starting from the rise of sound reproduction technologies such as the phonograph, telephone, and radio in the 1900s-20s until the theory of Brownian motions for random fluctuations and its application in thermionic tubes of telecommunication systems. These processes produced different theoretical treatments of noise in the 1920s-30s, such as statistical physicists' studies of Brownian fluctuations' temporal evolution, radio engineers' spectral analysis of atmospheric disturbances, and mathematicians' measure-theoretic formulation. Finally, it discusses the period during and after World War II and how researchers have worked on military projects of radar, gunfire control, and secret communications and converted the interwar theoretical studies of noise into tools for statistical detection, estimation, prediction, and information transmission. To physicists, mathematicians, electrical engineers, and computer scientists, this book offers a historical perspective on themes highly relevant in today's science and technology, ranging from Wi-Fi and big data to quantum information and self-organization. This book also appeals to environmental and art historians to modern music scholars as the history of noise constitutes a unique angle to study sound and society. Finally, to researchers in media studies and digital cultures, Transforming Noise demonstrates the deep technoscientific historicity of certain notions - information, channel, noise, equivocation - they have invoked to understand modern media and communication.

Download or read book Electronic Inspirations written by Jennifer Iverson and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a decimated post-war West Germany, the electronic music studio at the WDR radio in Cologne was a beacon of hope. Jennifer Iverson's Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde traces the reclamation and repurposing of wartime machines, spaces, and discourses into the new sounds of the mid-century studio. In the 1950s, when technologies were plentiful and the need for reconstruction was great, West Germany began to rebuild its cultural prestige via aesthetic and technical advances. The studio's composers, collaborating with scientists and technicians, coaxed music from sine-tone oscillators, noise generators, band-pass filters, and magnetic tape. Together, they applied core tenets from information theory and phonetics, reclaiming military communication technologies as well as fascist propaganda broadcasting spaces. The electronic studio nurtured a revolutionary synthesis of science, technology, politics, and aesthetics. Its esoteric sounds transformed mid-century music and continue to reverberate today. Electronic music--echoing both cultural anxiety and promise--is a quintessential Cold War innovation.

Download or read book Broadcasting Fidelity written by Myles W. Jackson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark history of early radio in Germany and the quest for broadcast fidelity When we turn on a radio or stream a playlist, we can usually recognize the instrument we hear, whether it’s a cello, a guitar, or an operatic voice. Such fidelity was not always true of radio. Broadcasting Fidelity shows how the problem of broadcast fidelity pushed German scientists beyond the traditional bounds of their disciplines and led to the creation of one of the most important electronic instruments of the twentieth century. In the early days of radio, acoustical distortions made it hard for even the most discerning musical ears to differentiate instruments and voices. The physicists and engineers of interwar Germany, with the assistance of leading composers and musicians, tackled this daunting technical challenge. Research led to the invention in 1930 of the trautonium, an early electronic instrument capable of imitating the timbres of numerous acoustical instruments and generating novel sounds for many musical genres. Myles Jackson charts the broader political and artistic trajectories of this instrument, tracing how it was embraced by the Nazis and subsequently used to subvert Nazi aesthetics after the war and describing how Alfred Hitchcock commissioned a later version of the trautonium to provide the sounds of birds squawking and flapping their wings in his 1963 thriller The Birds. A splendid work of scholarship by an acclaimed historian of science, Broadcasting Fidelity reveals how the interplay of science, technology, politics, and culture gave rise to new aesthetic concepts, innovative musical genres, and the modern discipline of electroacoustics.

Download or read book Testing Hearing written by Viktoria Tkaczyk and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality argues that the modern cultural practices of hearing and testing have emerged from a long interrelationship. Since the early nineteenth century, auditory test tools (whether organ pipes or electronic tone generators) and the results of hearing tests have fed back into instrument calibration, human training, architecture, and the creation of new musical sounds. Hearing tests received a further boost around 1900 as a result of injury compensation laws and state and professional demands for aptitude testing in schools, conservatories, the military, and other fields. Applied at large scale, tests of seemingly small measure-of auditory acuity, of hearing range-helped redefine the modern concept of hearing as such. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the epistemic function of hearing expanded. Hearing took on the dual role of test object and test instrument; in the latter case, human hearing became a gauge by which to evaluate or regulate materials, nonhuman organisms, equipment, and technological systems. This book considers both the testing of hearing and testing with hearing to explore the co-creation of modern epistemic and auditory cultures. The book's twelve contributors trace the design of ever more specific tests for the arts, education and communication, colonial and military applications, sociopolitical and industrial endeavors. Together, they demonstrate that testing as such became an enduring and wide-ranging cultural technique in the modern period, one that is situated between histories of scientific experimentation and many fields of application.

Download or read book Radiophilia written by Carolyn Birdsall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century ago, the emergence of radio, along with organized systems of broadcasting, sparked a global fascination with the 'wonder' of sound transmission and reception. The thrilling experience of tuning in to the live sounds of this new medium prompted strong affective responses in its listeners. This book introduces a new concept of radiophilia, defined as the attachment to, or even a love of radio. Treating radiophilia as a dynamic cultural phenomenon, it unpacks the various pleasures associated with radio and its sounds, the desire to discover and learn new things via radio, and efforts to record, re-experience, and share radio. Surveying 100 years of radio from early wireless through to digital audio formats like podcasting, the book engages in debates about fandom, audience participation, listening experience, material culture, and how media relate to affect and emotions.

Download or read book Physical Acoustics V15 written by Warren P. Mason and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-12-02 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Physical Acoustics: Principles and Methods, Volume XV is a four-chapter text that covers the history of ultrasonics, interdigital transducers, theory of resonance scattering, and acoustic emission. Chapter 1 provides the history of ultrasonics and the developments of its application in crystal transducers, oscillators, selective wave filters, underwater sound, dentistry, and medicine. Chapter 2 is a comprehensive account of the use of circuit model analysis to design interdigital transducers (IDTs) for surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. This chapter also looks into the total filter design problem for the important case of SAW filters composed solely of IDTs and matching circuits. Chapter 3 discusses the resonance scattering theory, its application to acoustic-and elastic-wave scattering, and the relevant experiments. Chapter 4 deals with the optical detection of acoustic emissions, acoustic emissions during various transformations, and dislocation effects. Researchers in the fields of electronics technology and applied and engineering mechanics will find this book invaluable.

Download or read book Introduction to Sound System Design and Electro Acoustics written by Peter Swarte and published by DHvV Interactive Lab. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended for those who are active with sound amplification and sound distribution. The book provides information on adapting sound systems and/or transducer to the given acoustics like in open, half-open and closed spaces. An important aspect is how loudspeakers can be adapted to cover all types of surroundings. Very often a choice has to be made from a wide range of loudspeakers. On the other hand a combination of loudspeakers must be developed and composed in order to adapt the loudspeakers to the given acoustical circumstances. The question of which loudspeaker is the correct choice and how they need to be set-up so that speech and music are fully comprehensible in all kinds of acoustical and noisy circumstances. This book gives a full answer to these questions. The reader is also made aware of the design of loudspeakers on the basis of Small and Thiele parameters. With thorough calculations and the visibility of the out coming of these calculations by simple software it is possible to convert the acoustic and mechanical elements of the loudspeaker into electrical analogues so that the loudspeaker is simulated on the PC. Using an example the calculations mentioned above can be supported. Finally the full reference list simplifies the task of the reader in finding the information they require. “I’ve been fascinated by the possibilities of Electro-acoustics since I was 10 years old and now I am very pleased to be able to share the knowledge that I built up over 40 years working in the Electro-acoustics division of Philips.” My work experience was supplemented by giving lectures on electro-acoustics at the post-academic courses on acoustics in Antwerp (Belgium)

Download or read book Sound Authorities written by Edward J. Gillin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-02-11 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sound Authorities shows how experiences of music and sound played a crucial role in nineteenth-century scientific inquiry in Britain. In Sound Authorities, Edward J. Gillin focuses on hearing and aurality in Victorian Britain, claiming that the development of the natural sciences in this era cannot be understood without attending to the study of sound and music. During this time, scientific practitioners attempted to fashion themselves as authorities on sonorous phenomena, coming into conflict with traditional musical elites as well as religious bodies. Gillin pays attention to sound in both musical and nonmusical contexts, specifically the cacophony of British industrialization. Sound Authorities begins with the place of acoustics in early nineteenth-century London, examining scientific exhibitions, lectures, spectacles, workshops, laboratories, and showrooms. He goes on to explore how mathematicians mobilized sound in their understanding of natural laws and their vision of a harmonious ordered universe. In closing, Gillin delves into the era’s religious and metaphysical debates over the place of music (and humanity) in nature, the relationship between music and the divine, and the tensions between spiritualist understandings of sound and scientific ones.

Download or read book Musica Practica written by Michael Chanan and published by Verso. This book was released on 1994-10-17 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musica Practica is a historical investigation into the social practice of Western music which advances an alternative approach to that of established musicology. Citing evidence from Barthes, Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Max Weber and Schoenberg, Michael Chanan explores the communal roots of the musical tradition and the effects of notation on creative and performing practice. He appraises the psychological wellsprings of music using the insights of linguistics, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Tracing the growth of musical printing and the creation of a market for the printed score, he examines the transformation of patronage with the demise of the ancien régime, and draws on little-known texts by Marx to analyze the formation of the musical economy in the nineteenth century. Chanan sketches out an unwritten history of musical instruments as technology, from Tutankhamen’s trumpets to the piano, the ancient Greek water organ to the digital synthesizer. The book concludes with reflections on the rise of modernism and the dissolution of the European tradition in a sea of postmodernism and “world music.” Musica Practica assumes no specialist knowledge of music beyond an ordinary familiarity with common terms and an average acquaintance with the music of different styles and periods. It is a fascinating commentary on the soundtrack of daily life in the metropolis of the late twentieth century.

Download or read book The Soundscape of Modernity written by Emily Thompson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America. In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era. Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston's Symphony Hall, New York's office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound—clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant—had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.

Download or read book Springer Handbook of Acoustics written by Thomas Rossing and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 1280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acoustics, the science of sound, has developed into a broad interdisciplinary field encompassing the academic disciplines of physics, engineering, psychology, speech, audiology, music, architecture, physiology, neuroscience and others. Here is an unparalleled modern handbook reflecting this richly interdisciplinary nature edited by one of the acknowledged masters in the field, Thomas Rossing. Researchers and students benefit from the comprehensive contents spanning: animal acoustics including infrasound and ultrasound, environmental noise control, music and human speech and singing, physiological and psychological acoustics, architectural acoustics, physical and engineering acoustics, medical acoustics and ocean acoustics. The Springer Handbook of Acoustics reviews the most important areas of acoustics, with emphasis on current research. The authors of the various chapters are all experts in their fields. Each chapter is richly illustrated with figures and tables. The latest research and applications are incorporated throughout, e.g. computer recognition and synthesis of speech, physiological acoustics, psychological acoustics, thermoacoustics, diagnostic imaging and therapeutic applications and acoustical oceanography. This new edition of the Handbook features over 11 revised and expanded chapters, new illustrations and two new chapters covering microphone arrays, acoustic metamaterials and acoustic emission. These improvements will make the handbook even more useful as a reference and a guide for researchers and students in every branch of acoustics. Praise for the first edition: "This treatise is a successful attempt to cover in one book the diverse field of acoustics, which ranges from physics to music and from formal mathematics to technological applications. ... It is this reviewer's opinion that a handbook like Rossing's, which covers the whole field of acoustics, serves a real purpose because it not only gives one a chance to see how one's specialty is covered but it also permits one to make a quick survey of other acoustical areas." (Leo Beranek, American Journal of Physics, Vol. 77 (12), December, 2009) "The Springer Handbook of Acoustics falls into that exceptional list. ...every physics department should have a copy available." (John L. Hubisz, The Physics Teacher, Vol. 48, March, 2010) "This handbook is an excellent addition to the acoustics literature. ... The handbook nicely covers both basics and advances in several areas of acoustics. Several chapters provide good mathematical depth, making the handbook useful as a research and technical resource. ...Overall, a very useful educational and research resource. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals." (M. G. Prasad, CHOICE, Vol. 45 (5), January, 2008) "This book covers a wide range of topics and the inclusion of musical acoustics, computer and electronic music appeal to me (singer, song-writer, performer and recording studio co-owner). This handbook is probably well suited for an undergraduate-level introduction to an acoustics course. ... The wide range of topics, inclusion of music-related chapters, eye-pleasing presentations and other useful features make this a very good book to have on your shelf." (Tim Casey, International Journal of Acoustics and Vibration, Vol. 13 (1), 2008) "The Springer Handbook of Acoustics comprises 28 chapters written by 33 authors. The Handbook of Acoustics is useful as a source book for anyone who needs or wants to become familiar with the jargon and issues related to a specific subfield of acoustics ... ." (Robert I. Odom, Siam Review, Vol. 50 (3), 2008) The Springer Handbook of Acoustics reviews the most important areas of acoustics, with emphasis on current research. The authors of the various chapters are all experts in their fields. Each chapter is richly illustrated with figures and tables. The latest research and applications are incorporated throughout, e.g. computer recognition and synthesis of speech, physiological acoustics, psychological acoustics, thermoacoustics, diagnostic imaging and therapeutic applications and acoustical oceanography. This new edition of the Handbook features over 13 revised and expanded chapters, new illustrations and 3 new chapters covering microphone arrays, acoustic metamaterials and acoustic emission. These improvements will make the handbook even more useful as a reference and a guide for researchers and students in every branch of acoustics.

Download or read book Acoustics Sound Fields and Transducers written by Leo Leroy Beranek and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long-awaited update and expansion of a widely recognised classic in the field by pioneering acoustics expert, Leo L. Beranek Builds upon Beranek's 1954 Acoustics classic by incorporating recent developments, practical formulas and methods for effective simulation Uniquely, provides the detailed acoustic fundamentals which enable better understanding of complex design parameters, measurement methods and data Brings together topics currently scattered across a variety of books and sources into one valuable reference Includes relevant case studies, real-world examples and solutions to bring the theory to life Acoustics: Sound Fields and Transducers is a modern expansion and re-working of Acoustics, the 1954 classic reference written by Leo L. Beranek. Updated throughout and focused on electroacoustics with the needs of a broad range of acoustics engineers and scientists in mind, this new book retains and expands on the detailed acoustical fundamentals included in the original whilst adding practical formulas and simulation methods for practising professionals. Benefitting from Beranek's lifetime experience as a leader in the field and co-author Tim Mellow's cutting-edge industry experience, Acoustics: Sound Fields and Transducers is a modern classic to keep close to hand in the lab, office and design studio. Builds on Beranek's 1954 Acoustics classic by incorporating recent developments, practical formulas and methods for effective simulationUniquely provides the detailed acoustic fundamentals, enabling better understanding of complex design parameters, measurement methods and dataBrings together topics currently scattered across a variety of books and sources into one valuable referenceIncludes relevant case studies, real-world examples and solutions to bring the theory to life.

Download or read book The Broadcaster Electrical Wireless Retailer written by and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: