Re: Measurement of pitch


"John Bailey" <john_bailey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:08ran2labqmc71frg5mat6v05k66o0i3v8@xxxxxxxxxx
On 4 Dec 2006 16:29:27 -0800, matt271829-news@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi

At what time in history were the range of frequencies of audible sounds
first roughly known? Who made the first scientifically accurate
measurement of the frequency of a sound wave, and when?

"Mersenne's description in his Harmonic universelle (1636) of the
first absolute determination of the frequency of an audible tone (at
84 Hz) implies that he already demonstrated that the
absolute-frequency ratio of two vibrating strings, radiating a musical
tone and its octave, is as 1 : 2.

Fascinating

And I found this description of how he did it
"The first major step toward defining pitch into an exact number of
vibrations per second - its frequency - was Mersenne in the 1600s, who
stretched a brass wire 138 feet and counted its vibrations by eye. He then
stretched smaller wires until they matched the tuning of an organ pipe and
scaled up the numbers from the long wire and correctly calculated its
frequency."
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/avinstall_measure/



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