Science and music / [by Sir James Jeans].

  • Jeans, James, 1877-1946.
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Science and music / [by Sir James Jeans]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    instrument which occupied less room than an upright piano, and needed amazingly little wind to blow it. On the other hand, this plan had its disadvantages. As each individual pipe of the mixture gave out its own harmonics in addition to its fundamental tone, the effect of too many ranks of mixtures was apt to be shrill and discordant, and whenever possible the purer tones of larger pipes were introduced as well. For instance the famous Schnitger organ in S. Jacobi at Hamburg has eleven ranks of mixtures on the pedals, but it has two 32-foot registers as well; the manuals contain thirty-nine ranks of mixtures and mutations, but also four registers of 16-foot pitch. The Mechanism of the Ear It would form a pleasing and perfect ending to our book if we could explain how the ear comes to have all the remarkable capacities we have noted. Unhappily this is still beyond the powers of science; no completely satis¬ factory theory of hearing, or of the mechanism of the ear, has yet been found. So far our explorations have taken us no farther into the ear than the ear-drum and the chain of small bones, the ossicles, which lie immediately behind it. This chain of bones transmits the motion of the ear-drum to a second membrane—the ‘‘oval” membrane of the cochlea (fig. 1)—and incidentally serves as a safety device acting rather like the slipping clutch of a motor-car, which may save the oval membrane from injury, if the ear-drum is set too violently into sudden motion. On passing through the oval membrane, we find ourselves inside the hard bony structure of the cochlea. Viewed from outside this looks