SAUVEUR, (JOSEPH). - THE DETERMINATION OF ABSOLUTE FREQUENCY OF SOUND.

Application des Sons Harmoniques. A la composition des Jeux d'Orgues. Par M. Sauveur.

Paris, Jean Boudot, 1704. 4to. Without wrappers. Extracted from "Mémoires de l'Academie des Sciences. Année 1702". Pp. 308-328 a. 2 large folded engraved plates. A few small brownspots. Wide-margined.

First appearance of a classic paper in the theory of sound (his second paper on Acoustics). Saveur had his first founding paper printed in 1701 "Systeme général des Intervalles des Sons, & son Application à tous les Systèmes & à tous les Instrumens de Musique." in which he developed the new subject "acoustique" (and coined the term), In the paper offered he was the first to use beasts to determine the frequency difference and he was thus able to calculate the absolute frequencies.

"To determine absolute frequency, Sauveur used a pair of organ pipes a small half-tone apart in just intonation (frequency ratio 25:24). This interval is sufficiently small that the beats can be counted, for low pitches. Furthermore, the interval can be obtained accurately by tuning through thirds and perfect fifths (for example, by tuning up two major thirds and then down a fifth). As a results of experiments done with Deslander, and organ builder, Sauveur found that the frequency of an organ pipe five Paris feet long was between 100 and 102 cps. Sauveur claimed to have obtained consistent results from experiments done with other piopes. Newton made a rough check of Sauveurs eresults..."(DSB XII, p. 128).

Order-nr.: 44382