Music and the Making of Modern Science

Hearing the Field 205

airs which he whistled first as solos, and then as duets, ” showing that the mouth itself

could be divided into two differently resonating chambers.^22 Though Williams treats these

as amusing, even silly, spectacles, they had a serious intent; most of the sessions of the

Royal Institution included “ serious ” science alongside a potpourri of curiosities.^23 W e

might better understand them as a kind of performative Wunderkammer , a collection of

remarkable and strange musical feats, inspired by the desire not merely to wonder but to

understand, according to the emerging lights of Young, Davy, and Faraday. In the present

instance, polyphonic whistling gave evidence of the multiplicity of modes of resonance.

Over the following two years, Wheatstone remained active as an inventor of musical

instruments, including the concertina (1829), still in use today ( figure 13.6a ). This innova-

tion was directly inspired by demonstrations of the Chinese sh ē ng ( figure 13.6b ), a mouth-

blown free reed organ brought to the West by Joseph Amiot in 1777, which Chladni

described in 1821 and which led to many new Western instruments such as the harmonica

and harmonium.^24

Extending his work on the transmission of sound, in July 1830 Wheatstone announced

via Faraday a method to determine the velocity of electricity in wires, which Wheatstone

published in 1834.^25 Wheatstone ’ s apparatus involved an ingenious revolving mirror that

could render observable times otherwise too small to measure ( figure 13.7 ). To test the

stability of the speed of rotation of the mirror itself, Wheatstone relied on a musical device:

he used the rotating arm to power a small siren, the stability of whose pitch accurately

A B

Figure 13.6

(a) Wheatstone ’ s patent diagrams for his concertina. (b) Chladni ’ s 1821 diagram of a Chinese sh ē ng.