THE KESB ARCHES OF DR. R. K(ENIG 



ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF MUSICAL HARMONY, AND TIMBRE. 



By Prof. Sylvanus P. Thompson. 



I. 



Not oftea does it fall to the lot of a scieutific man to become the 

 mouthpiece of another whose researches have histed over a (quarter of 

 a century; yet this is the enviable position in which I find myself on 

 this occasion as the spokesman of Dr. Rudolph Kceuig, who is known 

 not only as the constructor of the finest acoustical instruments in the 

 world, but as an investigator of great originality and distinction, and 

 author of numerous memoirs on acoustics. Dr. Ktenig, who has of 

 late made very important contributions to our knowledge of the phys- 

 ical basis of music, using apparatus immeasurably superior to any 

 hitherto employed in experimental investigations of this subject, has 

 on various occasions, when I have visited him in Paris, shown me these 

 instruments, and repeated to me the results of his researches. Impor- 

 tant as these are, they are all too little known in this country, even by 

 the professors of physics. It was, therefore, with no little satisfaction 

 that the Council of the Physical Society learned that Dr. Ktenig was 

 willing to send over to London for exiiibition on this occasion the in- 

 struments and apparatus used in these researches. And their satisfac- 

 tion to-day is heightened by the fact that Dr. Koenig has himself very 

 kindly come over to demonstrate his own researches, and has given us 

 the opportunity to welcome him personally amongst us. 



The splendid apparatus around me belongs to Dr. Koiuig and forms 

 but a very small part of the collection which adorns his atelier on the 

 Quai d'Anjou. He lives and works in seclusion, surrounded by his in- 

 struments, even as our own Faraday lived and worked amongst his 

 electric and magnetic apparatus. His great tonometer, now nearly 

 completed, comprises a set of standard tuning forks, adjusted each one 

 by his own hands, ranging from 20 vibrations per second up to nearly 

 40,000, with perfect continuity, many of the forks being furnished with 

 sliding adjustments, so as to give by actual marks upon them any de- 



* Read to the Physical Society of London, May 16. 1890. (From Nature, January 

 1, 8, and 15, 1891, vol. xuii, pp. 199-'20:5, 224-2-i7, and 249-253.) 



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