TRUMPET, SPEAKING AND HEARING

This article appears in Volume V27, Page 328 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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TRUMPET, SPEAKING AND HEARING . The speaking

trumpet

, though some

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

of the kind appears to have been in earlier use, is connected in its

modern

MODERN

form with the name of Athanasius Kircher and that of Sir Samuel Morland, who in 167o proposed to the Royal Society of London the question of
6 Robert Eitner made a curious confusion between the keyed and valve trumpets (Klappen-und Ventil-Trompete). In an article entitled Wer hat die Ventil-Trompete erfunden? (Monatshefte fur Musikwissenschaft, p. 41, Berlin, 1881) he deprives Stolzel of the credit of the invention of the valve in favour of Weidinger, ridiculing the notion that the keyed and the valve trumpets were not one and the same thing. Following up the

idea

IDEA (Gr. Ibia, connected with i&eiv, to see; cf. Lat. species from specere, to look at)

in his Tonkiinstler Lexikon, he leaves out Stolzel's name and ascribes to Weidinger the invention of the valve, with a reference to his article.
For this ingenious mechanism, see VALVE; also Gottfried Weber, Uber Ventilhorn and Trompete mit 3 Ventilen, Caecilia xvii. 73104 (Mainz, 1835) ; and Allg. musikal. Ztg. xxiii. 411 (

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1821); also A. Ung, " Verbesserung der Trompete and ahnlicher Instrumente," ibid. (1815), xviii. 633.
For accounts of the early use of the

trumpet

as a signalling and cavalry

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

in the British army, see Sir Roger Williams, A Brief Discourse of War, p. 9, &e. (London, 1590) ; Grose, Military Antiquities, ii. 41; Sir S. D. Scott, The British Army, ii. 389400 (London, 1868) ; and H. G. Farmer, Memoirs of the Royal Artillery Band (London, 1904).
the best form for a speaking trumpet. Lambert, in the Berlin Memoirs for 1763, seems to have been the first to give a theory of the action of this instrument, based on an altogether imaginary

analogy

ANALOGY (Gr. avaXo-yLa, proportion)

with the behaviour of light. In this theory, which is still commonly put forvlard, it is assumed that

sound

SOUND
SOUND, THE (Danish Oresund)

, like light, can be propagated in rays. This, however, is possible only when the aperture through which the wave-disturbance passes into free air is large compared with the wave-length. If the fusiform mouth of the speaking trumpet were half a mile or so in

radius

RADIUS

, Lambert's theory might give an approximation to the truth; But with trumpets whose aperture is only a foot in

diameter

DIAMETER (from the Cr. &a, through, µErpov, measure)

at the most the problem is one of diffraction.
In the hearing trumpet, the disturbance is propagated along the converging tube much in the same way as the tide-wave is propagated up the estuary of a tidal river. In speaking and hearing trumpets alike all reverberation of the instrument should be avoided by making it thick and of the least elastic materials, and by covering it externally with

cloth

CLOTH

. (See

SOUND

SOUND
SOUND, THE (Danish Oresund)

.)

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