PROCEEDINGS of the23rd International Congress on Acoustics
9 to 13 September 2019 in Aachen, Germany“Sound & Science: Digital Histories: Navigations through theHistory of Acoustics1
Viktoria TKACZYK(Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Humboldt University Berlin)

Abstract: This short paper presents the database “Sound & Science: Digital Histories,”
an initiative of the Max Planck Research Group “Epistemes of Modern Acoustics.” The“Sound & Science” database, currently in its beta version, provides valuable access toa diverse range of sources in the history of acoustics—many of them previously
unavailable in digital format. The resource includes a multimedia archive of primarysource material, documentation of surviving technology, and historical reenactments ofcrucial experiments in acoustics. The database includes sound files, texts, and images,
which can be browsed using a full-text search function or via curated collections, orcan be viewed on a map. In my paper, I will outline user-scenarios for the database’svisualization tools, which open up large-scale and longue durée views on the history ofsound and science, allowing users to explore and assemble material in unprecedentedways.
Berlin saw the establishment, between 1900 and 1930, of several institutions that interacted with each otherthrough a novel interest in acoustics. The electrical engineering company Siemens & Halske flourished,building the “Siemensstadt” settlement in Berlin’s northern district of Charlottenburg, and Carl Lindström
AG, headquartered in the Kreuzberg district, developed a global market for gramophone technology. At thesame time, Carl Stumpf’s Institute of Psychology, with its focus on tone psychology, expanded from its
tiny university venue in Dorotheenstrasse to a large-scale research center in the Berlin City Palace. During
World War I, Stumpf and the phonetician Wilhelm Doegen also founded the Royal Prussian Phonographic
Commission to record the languages and music of “colonial” prisoners of war interned near Berlin. This
opportunistic research initiative during the Weimar Republic eventually led to the formation of two soundarchives: the Berlin Phonogram Archive and the Lautabteilung (“sound department”) of the Prussian State
Library. Later, during the 1920s, Berlin also witnessed the creation of an experimental radio
laboratory—the Rundfunkversuchsstelle—at the Academy of Music, supervised by an advisory board withrepresentatives of the Imperial Post Office, the Heinrich Hertz Institute for Oscillation Research, and thetwo Berlin radio stations Deutsche Welle and Berliner Funk-Stunde. Bound by politics, industry, science,

1This paper has first been published as an introductory essay to the database, Sound & Science: Digital Histories.
I thank Xiaochang Li, Fanny Gribenski, Kate Sturge, and the IT research group of the Ma x Planck Institute for theHistory of Science in Berlin for collaborating on this essay.

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art, and technology as these endeavors all were, they facilitated the formation of long-lived infrastructures,
technological heritage, and entire research fields—including electroacoustics, experimental phonetics,
linguistics, phoniatrics, language studies, musicology, radio studies, bioacoustics, and tone psychology.
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science’s new database “Sound & Science: DigitalHistories”—the fruit of archival research and conceptual work by the Max Planck ResearchGroup “Epistemes of Modern Acoustics”—aims at disentangling these complex institutional networks.
Research projects within the group trace the genealogy of acoustic knowledge throughout the modern era,
charting the making of the discipline of acoustics and exploring the historical conditions that allowed
acoustic knowledge to be turned into scientific knowledge—and back into the practices of musicians,architects, engineers, or everyday listeners. They unpick sonic strategies of knowledge production invarious scientific and humanistic disciplines, strategies—sometimes manifest, but often implicit—that havepreviously been largely overlooked by historians of science.
Connected to these research themes, the “Sound & Science” database, currently in its beta version,
provides valuable access to a diverse range of sources in the history of acoustics—many of them previouslyunavailable in digital format. The resource includes a multimedia archive of primary source material,
documentation of surviving technology, and historical reenactments of crucial experiments in acoustics.
Visualization tools open up large-scale and longue durée views on the history of sound and science,
allowing users to explore and assemble material in unprecedented ways. The database includes sound files,
texts, and images, which can be browsed using a full-text search function or via curated collections, or canbe viewed on a map. Examples include curated collections such as “Carl Stumpf’s experimental records” or
the “Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology’s Recordings of Birdsongs.”Go to the map, focus on“Berlin,” narrow the slider to “1900–1930,” and you will find primary sources on the local network ofinstitutions described above.

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Additional analysis tools of the database reflect the variety of people, places, scientific disciplines,
practical fields, technologies, building materials, and theoretical topics that have shaped acoustic history.
Its tagging system connects all holdings that—for example—mention technologies such as “tuningforks” or “sirens,” materials such as “metal” or “wood,” or topics like “speech/voice” or “noise.” These
instruments, all equipped with short explanatory textboxes, are anticipated to turn the database into a
research tool in its own right, aiding scholars in the identification of new connections and sites of inquiry.
By bringing together archives from a great variety of places and periods—from Antique Greece andRoman Empire to contemporary Taiwan—the “Sound & Science” database offers users a means to recover
the historical multiplicity of scientific, artistic, religious, and political practices entwined with the study ofsound. The collection is continually extended through the efforts of members, guest scholars, andcollaborators of the Research Group, thus serving as a record of its collective project. To source, digitize,and contextualize rare material, the database team works with international partners including theDeutsches Museum in Munich, the Science Museum in London, New York University, the University ofCambridge, Maastricht University, the University of Amsterdam, and the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Collaborators of the database project assist in linking and contextualizing historical sources throughspecially-curated exhibits and a series of accessible multimedia essays. Written by outstanding experts inmusicology, sound studies, and the history of science, technology, engineering, and architecture, the essays
frame the objects in light of the disciplines’ latest insights (read our initial collection of contributor essays,
and consider adding one yourself!). In turn, database objects can be directly linked to users’ own digital andprint publications using QR codes and shortened URLs.
The database has been developed in cooperation with the Research IT group of the MPIWG. It tookfurther inspiration from earlier projects of the institute such as the “Virtual Laboratory”, and from existing
digital humanities projects in the history of science and sound studies. Among these are jewels such as areconstruction of New York’s “Roaring Twenties,” an interactive map of the phonograph stores in Paris, anhistorical collection of Phono-Post recordings worldwide, and the British Library’s various projects tocatalog, map, annotate, and analyze historical sound recordings. The database complements thesehighly-focused digital platforms by opening up a broad-based notion of the history of acoustics and its
sources. Rather than aspiring to being comprehensive in any respect, it provides the opportunity for richcross-referencing that reveals striking and unexpected historical relationships between the sources. The
database currently contains around 1,000 items, but this is its very first step: content continues to be added,
and the features and functionality of the site refined. The Research Group aims at expanding and exploring
new ways of responding to the specific challenges raised by digital histories of sound. Contributions,feedback, and suggestions in further developing the beta version are welcomed. Join us in celebrating thelaunch of what we hope will be a growing and dynamic scholarly resource for research in the history ofacoustics!

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