Overview

The nineteenth century saw the development of the mathematical techniques and experimental methods needed to understand the vibrations of objects and the motion of sound waves in air and other media. These developments were summarized and integrated by John Strutt (1842-1919), better known as Lord Rayleigh, in his The Theory of Sound, first published in 1877. Raleigh's text remains one of the fundamental reference works for acoustical scientists and engineers.

Background

The history of the science of acoustics is somewhat unusual in that, unlike the case of heat or projectile motion, the essential nature of sound has been correctly understood since the time of the ancient Greeks. They identified the origin of sound with the vibration of bodies and understood it to be transmitted through the air in some fashion...