The age of electroacoustics [ Texto impreso] : transforming science and sound / Roland Wittje.

1. Introduction: A History and Geography of Acoustics. 1.1 Sound and Acoustics ; 1.2 A Geography of Acoustics: Sound, Space, and Time ; 1.3 Sound and Power: Acoustics as an Imperial Science ; 1.4 Concepts and Significance of Noise in Acoustics ; 1.5 Electroacoustics and Analog Thinking ; 1.6 Transformation of Science and Sound from the Fin de Siècle to the Interwar Years -- 2. The Electrification of Sound: From High Culture to Electropolis. 2.1 Acoustics in the Age of Empire ; 2.2 Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone and Rayleigh's The Theory of Sound ; 2.3 Experimental Psychology and Beyond: From the Physics of Sensation to the Evolution of Music ; 2.4 Electrification of Sound: Electrodynamic Theory, Instruments, and Circuit Design ; 2.5 Electroacoustics in the Electromagnetic Worldview: The Electric Arc as Experimental System for Oscillation Research -- 3. Science Goes to War: Warface and the Industrialization of Acoustics. 3.1 Acoustics in the Chemists' War ; 3.2 Signal and Noise: Sound Detection on the Battlefield ; 3.3 The transformation of Sound Measurement ; 3.4 Wireless and the Rise of Electroacoustics ; 3.5 The Great War and the Transformation of Acoustics -- 4. Between Science and Engineering, Academia and Industry: Acoustics in the Weimar Republic. 4.1 Acoustics between Science and Engineering ; 4.2 Acoustics at the Technische Hochschule ; 4.3 Sound Industry: Acoustics Research in Corporate Laboratories ; 4.4 Public Research Laboratories ; 4.5 Institutions of Technische Akustik in the Weimar Republic -- 5. Acoustics Goes Bak to War: Mass Mobilization and Remilitarization of Acoustics Research. 5.1 A New Sound for a New Time? Acoustics and Nazi Germany ; 5.2 "Technik ist Dienst am Volke" - Acoustics as Ideology ; 5.3 Volksempfänger and Gemeinschafsempfang ; 5.4 Electroacoustic Amplification of Large Political Rallies ; 5.5 Remilitarization of Acoustics Research -- 6. Conclusion: The New Acoustics. 6.1 Acoustics as Modern Physics ; 6.2 Topographies of Science and Discipline Building ; 6.3 Sound Measurement ; 6.4 Concepts of Noise and Their Diffusion ; 6.5 Electroacoustics as a New Way of Thinking and Talking about Sound

"At the end of the nineteenth century, acoustics was a science of musical sounds; the musically trained ear was the ultimate reference. Just a few decades into the twentieth century, acoustics had undergone a transformation from a scientific field based on the understanding of classical music to one guided by electrical engineering, with industrial and military applications. In this book, Roland Wittje traces this transition, from the late nineteenth-century work of Hermann Helmholtz to the militarized research of World War I and media technology in the 1930s. Wittje shows that physics in the early twentieth century was not only about relativity and atomic structure but encompassed a range of experimental, applied, and industrial research fields. The emergence of technical acoustics and electroacoustics illustrates a scientific field at the intersection of science and technology. Wittje starts with Helmholtz's and Rayleigh's work and its intersection with telegraphy and early wireless, and continues with the industrialization of acoustics during World War I, when sound measurement was automated and electrical engineering and radio took over the concept of noise. Researchers no longer appealed to the musically trained ear to understand sound but to the thinking and practices of electrical engineering. Finally, Wittje covers the demilitarization of acoustics during the Weimar Republic and its remilitarization at the beginning of the Third Reich. He shows how technical acoustics fit well with the Nazi dismissal of pure science, representing everything that "German Physics" under National Socialism should be: experimental, applied, and relevant to the military." (solapa)