Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 18
Scan 18
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHAPTER I
3VIOLIN GENESIS
5To me it has always appeared unimportant and not very interesting to answer the question, "Were or were not the ancients—by which we usually mean Babylonians, Egyptians, or Greeks and Romans—acquainted with the fact that stretched strings could be set in tonal vibration by means of horse-hair, reed, or some other fibre?" They knew most things, and how much they knew we are only now beginning to discover.
7At one time we thought that even the Romans did not know that water rose to its level, but they were well acquainted with the fact.
9We pride ourselves upon the triumphs of modern surgery, but we now find that the Egyptians were also great surgeons and operated successfully for calculus.
11The wonders of electric telegraphy are doubtless of modern origin, but the Greeks were at least aware of the attractive properties of amber, which they called "Electron," though they made no use of electricity, and they may very likely have been acquainted with the principle of rubbing, as they certainly were of plucking, a string in tension to produce a sound—
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