[Rarebooks] fa: ACOUSTICS - ON THE VOWEL SOUNDS AND REED-PIPE ORGANS - Robert Willis 1829

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other science and mathematics titles, auctions ending Sunday, October 6. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/o8jk43a

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.



Robert Willis: On the Vowel Sounds, and on Reed Organ-Pipes. 1829. [Cambridge: Printed at the University Press, 1830.] A complete paper, extracted from a broken volume of the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and bound in olive french wraps; 4to (28 x 22 cm); 38 pp. (p. 231-268), with a leaf of plates. Light toning to the text and spotting to the plate, short closed edge-tear to one leaf, otherwise clean and sound and firmly bound in fresh modern wraps.

Robert Willis (1800-1875), from 1835 the Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge University, was the first Cambridge professor to win widespread recognition in the field of mechanical engineering. He was also one of the first to scientifically explore the nature of vowel sounds and the mechanics of human speech. In this paper he describes his "plan of operations [as] namely..., to determine, if possible, by experiments upon the usual acoustic instruments, what forms or cavities, or other conditions, are essential to the production of these [vowel] sounds, after which, by comparing these with various positions of the human organs, it might be possible, not only to deduce the explanation and reason of their various positions, but to separate those parts and motions which are destined for the performance of their other functions, from those which are immediately peculiar to speech (if such exist)."