Object Details
- Description
- A sonometer demonstrates the relationship between the frequency of the sound produced by a plucked string, and the tension, length and mass per unit length of the string. This 8-string example came from the Smithsonian Institution Instrument Room, and was undoubtedly made by Rudolph Koenig in Paris. Koenig termed it a great sonometer according to M. Barbereau. Mathurin August Balthazar Barbereau (1799-1879) was a French musician.
- Ref: Rudolph Koenig, Catalogue des Appareils d’Acoustique (Paris, 1865), p. 25.
- David Pantalony, Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris (2009).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- Maker
- Rudolph Koenig
- date made
- 1865-1880
- Measurements
- overall: 23 cm x 133 cm x 57 cm; 9 1/16 in x 52 3/8 in x 22 7/16 in
- overall: 9 1/2 in x 51 in x 22 1/2 in; 24.13 cm x 129.54 cm x 57.15 cm
- Object Name
- sonometer, Barberau
- sonometer
