Kymograph

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Kymograph of Thomas Young
Blood pressure test with a kymograph (1891)

A kymograph ("wave recorder") is a device for graphically recording a position over time. It consists of a rotating roller with stretched (sooty) paper on which a writing instrument or stylus is moved by changing its position in a sensor mechanism and records traces.

The first kymograph goes back to Thomas Young , who presented his self-made model in 1807 in the text A course of lectures on natural philosophy and mechanical arts . The physiologist Carl Ludwig also developed a kymograph in the 1840s, initially for the purpose of intrusive blood pressure measurement . The devices were also used to record muscle contractions and other physiological movement processes, as well as sound analysis. In contrast to the phonograph , it was not a question of the reproducibility, but only the graphic representation of the sound waves .

With his kymograph, Carl Ludwig had a great influence on the further development of physiology . Within a few years, “first by German physiologists, then especially by Marey in France, a large number of self-registering devices were developed and used in physiological research”.

Web links

Commons : Kymographs  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Cf. for example kymograph according to Ludwig and Baltzar (before 1890), Harvard University, Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments (English).
  2. Contribution to the program “ Forschungs aktuell” from Deutschlandfunk : Devices for researching human language. The acoustic-phonetic collection of the University of Dresden (December 22, 2008; accessed February 20, 2011).
  3. Soraya de Chadarevian: The “method of curves” in physiology between 1850 and 1900. In: Hans-Jörg Rheinberger , Michael Hagner (ed.): The experimentalization of life. Experimental systems in the biological sciences 1850/1900. Berlin 1993, p. 29.