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Scan 268
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 254. See the scan on archive.org.
1duced a similar effect. The merest tyro in violin playing is acquainted with this phenomenon. It was thus established that the more regular the reinforcing plate or body, the more perfect and easy were its vibrations; and the more regular and perfect the vibrations, the finer was the sound produced. It was then seen how necessary it was that all the parts composing a violin should be perfectly symmetrical, and it was no longer surprising to find so few violins and violoncellos with an equal intensity of tone throughout all their notes. The lack of symmetry displayed in ordinary violins, arising from the difficulty of working such a form into accurate proportions, causes irregularity in the vibration, resulting in what in acoustics are called "beats," which, instead of reinforcing the tone, mix it with "noise." Often a violin which sounds with an apparently powerful tone, when played close at hand, loses that quality at a greater distance, in a degree out of all proportion to the space through which the sound has to travel. This is occasioned by those irregular vibrations which produce the "noise" being unable to communicate themselves so well to the air as those regular ones which produce the tone.
3Researches were then made as to thickness of backs and bellies, for the purpose of reinforcing tone. If two round plates are taken of the same material, of exactly the same diameter, but one be twice as thick as the other, and the experiment with the sand be repeated so that the figure formed thereby is the same in both cases, the thinner plate will yield a sound an octave lower than that of the other. This result, easy to verify,
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