Showing posts with label Megan Watts Hughes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Megan Watts Hughes. Show all posts

Saturday, January 09, 2021

Converting sound into an image via an eidophone

Click any image to enlarge

In my earlier post Reconstructing sound from a silent video we saw a method of reconstructing audio by observing the minute variations of a surface's edge caused by sound vibrations. In this post we see images made by sound vibrations.

Megan Watts Hughes was a 19th Century Welsh singer and scientist. She developed a machine she called an Eidophone which allowed her to create graphic captures of her singing notes by disturbing particles on a membrane. Some of the pictures are very striking.

These are taken from the Public Domain Review's post Picturing a Voice. There are more examples at the link, as well as a discussion of her eidophone and other early attempts to visually capture sound.