Manometric Apparatus
notes: label: Description
content: In 1862, Rudolph Koenig, an acoustic instrument maker in Paris, devised a manometric apparatus in which the flame of a burning gas jet vibrates in response to the variations in pressure of a sound wave. Three years later, the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale awarded him a gold medal, noting that “The most curious of all his inventions is . . . without doubt the one that uses gas flames as a means for revealing the vibratory movements of air.”
label: Description
content: This manometric capsule (missing tube and mouthpiece) was probably made by Koenig, and probably purchased for the Smithsonian by Joseph Henry, the physicist who served as founding Secretary of the Institution.
label: Description
content: Ref: Rudolph Koenig, <i>Catalogue des Appareils d’Acoustique</i> (Paris, 1889), p. 84.
label: Description
content: David Pantalony, <i>Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris</i> (2009), p. 58
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.325951
label: catalog number
content: 325951
label: accession number
content: 258285
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Manometric Capsule
label: Object Name
content: manometric apparatus
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 10.5 cm x 4.5 cm; x 4 1/8 in x 1 3/4 in
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 7/8 in x 4 1/4 in x 3 in; 4.7625 cm x 10.795 cm x 7.62 cm