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Altered Sensations
Rudolph Koenig was one of the more prolific and colourful instrument makers in the renowned nineteenth-century precision instrument trade of Paris. Beginning his career as a violin maker, in 1858 the young Prussian immigrant shifted his talents towards the growing field of acoustics. Altered Sensations is a portrait of his vibrant atelier, a place of construction, commerce and experiment. For over forty years it was also a popular meeting place for scientists, artisans, musicians and teachers. Using archival and collection research from across North American and Europe, David Pantalony has traced the material and social influences of this space on the development of modern acoustics. In part...
Study, Measure, Experiment
Dartmouth College boasts one of the largest collections of old scientific instruments in North America; they range from precision machines that represented the most advanced technology of their day to homemade devices produced by faculty and students. This book examines approximately 150 items from this remarkable collection to offer insights into the teaching of science and the conduct of scientific reesearch at a leading educational institution. Though the instruments are beautifully photographed and presented, the authors do not treat them as isolated objects; rather, they stress the historical and social circumstances of the instruments' creation and use. The instruments are grouped by f...
Distributivity-like Results in the Medieval Traditions of Euclid's Elements
This book provides a fresh view on an important and largely overlooked aspect of the Euclidean traditions in the medieval mathematical texts, particularly concerning the interrelations between geometry and arithmetic, and the rise of algebraic modes of thought. It appeals to anyone interested in the history of mathematics in general and in history of medieval and early modern science.
Science and Sound in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Science and Sound in Nineteenth-Century Britain is a four-volume set of primary sources which seeks to define our historical understanding of the relationship between British scientific knowledge and sound between 1815 and 1900. In the context of rapid urbanization and industrialization, as well as a growing overseas empire, Britain was home to a rich scientific culture in which the ear was as valuable an organ as the eye for examining nature. Experiments on how sound behaved informed new understandings of how a diverse array of natural phenomena operated, notably those of heat, light, and electro-magnetism. In nineteenth-century Britain, sound was not just a phenomenon to be studied, but central to the practice of science itself and broader understandings over nature and the universe. This collection, accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, will be of great interest to students and scholars of the History of Science.
The Sonic Color Line
"Race is a visual phenomenon, the ability to see "difference." At least that is what conventional wisdom has lead us to believe. Yet, The Sonic Color Line argues that American ideologies of white supremacy are just as dependent on what we hear-voices, musical taste, volume-as they are on skin color or hair texture. Reinforcing compelling new ideas about the relationship between race and sound with meticulous historical research, Jennifer Lynn Stoever helps us to better understand how sound and listening not only register the racial politics of our world, but actively produce them. Through analysis of the historical traces of sounds of African American performers, Stoever reveals a host of racialized aural representations operating at the level of the unseen-the sonic color line-and exposes the racialized listening practices she figures as "the listening ear."" --New York University Press.
Scientific Instruments on Display
During their active lives, scientific instruments generally inhabit the laboratory, observatory, classroom or the field. But instruments have also lived in a wider set of venues, as objects on display. As such, they acquire new levels of meaning; their cultural functions expand. This book offers selected studies of instruments on display in museums, national fairs, universal exhibitions, patent offices, book frontispieces, theatrical stages, movie sets, and on-line collections. The authors argue that these displays, as they have changed with time, reflect changing social attitudes towards the objects themselves and toward science and its heritage. By bringing display to the center of analysis, the collection offers a new and ambitious framework for the study of scientific instruments and the material culture of science. Contributors are: Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, Silke Ackermann, Marco Beretta, Laurence Bobis, Alison Boyle, Fausto Casi, Ileana Chinnici, Suzanne Débarbat, Richard Dunn, Inga Elmqvist-Söderlund, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Peggy A. Kidwell, Richard Kremer, Mara Miniati, Richard A. Paselk, Donata Randazzo, Steven Turner.
Curious Devices and Mighty Machines
From their quirky origins to their contemporary role as centers of advocacy, a look at the secret lives of science museums—past, present, and future. Science museums have paradoxes at their core. They must be accessible and fun while representing increasingly complex science. They must be both historic and contemporary. Their exhibits attract millions, but most of their objects remain in deep storage, seldom seen. This book delves into these conflicts, revealing the secret lives of science curators; where science objects come from and who uses them; and, ultimately, what science museums are for. With an insider’s eye, Samuel J. M. M. Alberti exposes the idiosyncratic past and intriguing current practices of these institutions—and sets out a map for their future.
British Versions of Book II of Euclid’s Elements: Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra (1550–1750)
This book discusses the changing conceptions about the relationship between geometry and arithmetic within the Euclidean tradition that developed in the British context of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Its focus is on Book II of the Elements and the ways in which algebraic symbolism and methods, especially as recently introduced by François Viète and his followers, took center stage as mediators between the two realms, and thus offered new avenues to work out that relationship in idiosyncratic ways not found in earlier editions of the Euclidean text. Texts examined include Robert Recorde's Pathway to Knowledge (1551), Henry Billingsley’s first English translation of the Elements...
The Romance of Science: Essays in Honour of Trevor H. Levere
The Romance of Science pays tribute to the wide-ranging and highly influential work of Trevor Levere, historian of science and author of Poetry Realised in Nature, Transforming Matter, Science and the Canadian Arctic, Affinity and Matter and other significant inquiries in the history of modern science. Expanding on Levere’s many themes and interests, The Romance of Science assembles historians of science -- all influenced by Levere's work -- to explore such matters as the place and space of instruments in science, the role and meaning of science museums, poetry in nature, chemical warfare and warfare in nature, science in Canada and the Arctic, Romanticism, aesthetics and morals in natural philosophy, and the “dismal science” of economics. The Romance of Science explores the interactions between science's romantic, material, institutional and economic engagements with Nature.
Chaim L. Pekeris and the Art of Applying Mathematics with WEIZAC, 1955–1963
This book describes the groundbreaking work of Chaim Leib Pekeris and his collaborators. Between 1955 and 1963 they used the first electronic computer built in Israel, the Weizmann Automatic Computer (WEIZAC), to develop powerful numerical methods that helped achieve new and accurate solutions of the Boltzmann equation, calculate energy levels of the helium atom, produce detailed geophysical and seismological models derived from the study of the free oscillations of the earth, and refine models used to predict meteorological phenomena and global oceanic tides. This book provides a unique account of the pioneering work of Chaim L. Pekeris in applied mathematics and explains in detail the background to the rise of the Weizmann Institute as a world-class center of scientific excellence. This hitherto untold story is of great interest to historians of twentieth-century science with special emphasis on the application of computer-assisted numerical methods in various branches of mathematical physics.
