Chladni and the development of acoustics from 1750-1860 (Q1910358)

A scientific biography of Ernst Florens Chladni (1756-1827), who was the most significant figure in experimental acoustics at the turn of the 19th century. The author gives a detailed account of Chladni's life which alternated between periods of experimental studies in his native town of Wittenberg and travels to a variety of European countries, where the physicist demonstrated the vibrations of plates by his sand figure method (the so-called Chladni figures) and got in personal contact with famous contemporaries, including Goethe and Napoleon. The main focus of this book is the description of Chladni's inventions of keyboard instruments, and an analysis of his writings on acoustics and cosmology (Chladni had proposed the theory of the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites). The last chapter is devoted to the development of acoustics until the new era that starts with the pioneering works of Hermann von Helmholtz around 1855. Thanks to an exhaustive bibliography, a subject index and a name index, the book can also be used as a reference work on the history of acoustics, a topic that, up to the present day, has been rather neglected by historians of science.