A Brief History of Acoustics

Abstract

Although there are certainly some good historical treatments of acoustics in the literature, it still seems appropriate to begin a handbook of acousticshistory acoustics with a brief history of the subject. We begin by mentioning some important experiments that took place before the 19th century. Acoustics in the 19th century is characterized by describing the work of seven outstanding acousticians: Tyndall, von Helmholtz, Rayleigh, Stokes, Bell, Edison, and Koenig. Of course this sampling omits the mention of many other outstanding investigators. To represent acoustics during the 20th century, we have selected eight areas of acoustics, again not trying to be all-inclusive. We select the eight areas represented by the first eight technical areas in the Acoustical Society of America. These are architectural acoustics, physical acoustics, engineering acoustics, structural acoustics, underwater acoustics, physiological and psychological acoustics, speech, and musical acoustics. We apologize to readers whose main interest is in another area of acoustics. It is, after all, a broad interdisciplinary field.