It was
Ernst Chladni (1756–1827), a German jurist, physicist, and musician now known as the Father of Acoustics, who had developed the precursor to Cymatics (
to kyma, the wave;
ta kymatika, matters pertaining to waves, wave matters.) in the early 1800s. Chladni repeated the pioneering experiments of Robert Hooke of Oxford University who, on July 8, 1680, had observed the nodal patterns associated with the vibrations of glass plates. Hooke ran a violin bow along the edge of a plate covered with flour, and saw the nodal patterns emerge.
[i]
In a demonstration to Napoleon in 1809, Chladni placed sand in a plate fixed to a pedestal and drew a violin bow around the plate, causing the sand to shift into intricate designs, effectively making sound waves visible. In the 1900s
Hans Jenny, building on Chladni’s work, studied and documented the effects of sound vibrations on fluids, powders, and liquid paste. He would place these substances on a steel plate and then vibrate the plate at different frequencies, observing that a given vibrational frequency would organize the substance(s) into particular patterns. Jenny also developed the tonoscope for observing the action of the human voice on various materials in various media. This is a simple apparatus into which the experimenter can speak without any intermediate
electroacoustic unit. Thus, vibrations are imparted to a diaphragm on which sand, powder, or a liquid are placed as indicators. Speaking actually produces on this diaphragm figures that correspond, as it were, to the sound spectrum of a vowel. The pattern is characteristic not only of the sound but also the pitch of the speech or song. The indicator material and also the nature of the diaphragm are, of course, also determinative factors.
[ii]
When “Om,” the Hindu primordial sound of creation, is intoned into a tonoscope it forms in the substance the
Sri Yantra, the visual representation of the
Om chant and the vibration behind the cosmos itself
[iii], the “sound” of the aetheric medium or “fabric” of space. Tellingly, it displays a self-similar/fractal interlaced tetrahedra-within-concentric-circles motif. (Technically, a tetrahedron isn’t fractal in itself because fractality is defined by the phi/Golden Ratio, and the tetrahedron is not based on phi, as
Dan Winter emphatically instructs.) Thus we see that the Hindus knew thousands of years ago that sound possessed geometry, or sound into form is a fundamental truth of reality. The Om chant itself is one for expanding consciousness by developing resonance with the cosmos. (Remember, too, that sound waves exist in three dimensions!)