Electric Sounds 193
Ritter ’ s speculations, “ the greatest ever said about tones ” and their felt musical effects,
“ how sorrow and joy each has its own, the former in minor, the latter in major. ” Ø rsted
considers light a higher frequency of vibration than sound: “ According to this conception,
one sense would become an octave of the other on the grand scale of sensations, and all
would be subject to the same laws. Thus all sensations spring from the same original force,
which in light works in puncto but in galvanism spreads in space, where, however, it runs
through all forms of vibration so that it becomes perceptible to every sense. ”^26 Marveling
at this all-encompassing unity, Ø rsted hears in musical harmony, as in Chladni ’ s sound
figures, “ the mark of an invisible Reason ” that is far more than “ mechanical sensory
stimulation. ”
Ø rsted ’ s major discovery emerged within this nexus of electricity and sound. In 1815,
he had demonstrated “ that heat and light consist of the conflict of the electricities, ” implic-
itly including sound, as his other comments confirm.^27 In 1820, he gives specific form to
“ electromagnetism ” (as he christens this new unity) by exhibiting the essentially perpen-
dicular effect of currents on magnets through the intermediacy of the “ conflict of electrici-
ties, ” which he defines as “ the effect which takes place in this conductor and in the
surrounding space. ”^28 Ø rsted ’ s description of the circular lines of “ conflict ” surrounding
the conductor directly recall the transverse outlines he had provided for the dynamic
motions of sound and electricity ( figure 12.5 ) as well as his detailed descriptions of
the motions induced by those forces. He does not discuss the contrast with longitudinal
motions noted in the previous chapter, though he was probably aware of Chladni ’ s use of
this term to describe the propagation of sound in his figures. Ø rsted seems to take as self-
evident that the symmetry of the source (the linear conducting wire) should be reflected
in the form of the “ conflict ” that surrounds it, whose transverse (rather than radial) sym-
metry is far from obvious. The only precedent we can find in Ø rsted ’ s earlier work is the
transversality of the sound/electric effects on his vibrating plates, though his 1820 papers
announcing the new electromagnetic effect do not explicitly direct attention to its acoustic
prehistory.
Ø rsted, however, always mentions the unity of forces that guided all his endeavors,
among which sound figures in so many cases. He certainly takes his 1820 discovery to
confirm his guiding presupposition. By comparing his new work to the response of
magnets during storms, Ø rsted implicitly includes it in the interrelated framework of
thunder and lightning, as if such weather provided a macroscopic precedent for his dis-
covery, dramatically combining sound and light. His work on sound becomes the all-
pervasive background and matrix in which he explores the unification of electricity,
magnetism, and light.
Ø rsted ’ s publications spread news of his discovery, which first found its experimental
confirmation during one of his lecture demonstrations; his first direct observations were
thus preceded and prepared by a long period in which the example of sound and the quest
for unification of the forces of nature focused his attention. In Paris about at the same