Sound | How long have people wondered about sound?
How long have people wondered about sound?
People have been experimenting with sound for a long time. Pythagoras (572–497 B.C.) experimented with strings to determine
how sounds changed with changes in the lengths of the strings. Historians credit him with the development of the musical scale.
In about 1700, French physicist Joseph Sauveur first used the word acoustics to describe music and the way sound works. He worked on the mathematics of sound and studied how strings made different sounds depending on their length.
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) discovered much about sound in the 1800s, especially the connections between mathematics and music. He also built one of the first sirens.
Sound, and the way humans and other animals perceive it, is a fascinating topic. What kind of questions do you have...
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