THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[FIFTH SERIES.] 



JUNE 1876. 



LI. On the Simultaneous Sounding of two Notes* 

 By Dr. Rudolph Konig, Paris*. 



IF two notes are produced upon the same instruxiient, or 

 by the vibrations of two bodies which are closely con- 

 nected together through a third, there ensue some very 

 intricate phenomena, which are partly produced by the re- 

 action of the two sources of sound upon each other, and the 

 action of both upon the connecting body, and partly also have 

 their origin in the continuance of the two sound-waves in the 

 air. It is my present intention in the following pages to 

 submit to a closer examination only those phenomena which 

 arise from the coexistence of two sound-waves in the air ; and 

 I have therefore used for the demonstration of these waves 

 only such sources of sound as were absolutely isolated 

 from each other, and could not possibly act upon each other 

 directly, or combined together upon a third body. As, further, 

 the waves produced by clangsf must always be considered as a 

 combination of waves of simple notes, and as therefore it may 

 remain doubtful when clangs are employed whether the phe- 

 nomena observed are produced by the fundamental notes or 

 by the over-notes, I have been careful in these experiments so 

 to select the sources of sound that they should only produce 

 the simplest possible notes. For the low notes I used very 

 stout tuning-forks, mounted on isolated iron frames, and 

 placed in front of large sounding-boxes ; for the upper notes 



* Translated from Poggendorff's Annalen, vol. clvii. p, 177. And com- 

 municated by W. Spottiswoode, M.A., LL.D., V.P.K.S. 



t By " clang " is meant the entire sound emitted by an instrument 

 when sounding a musical note. 



Phil. Mag. S. 5. Vol. 1. No. 6. June 1876. 2 F 



