Abstract
Jakob Hermann published his analysis of the propagating pressure wave in his Phoronomia1 of 1716. In the same year he published his analysis of the vibrating string in the Acta Eruditorum.2 In both of these works he seeks and finds simple harmonic motions associated with the respective problems; in both cases his analysis is wrong. This demonstrates quite well how great confusion about dynamics in many degrees of freedom was compatible with a sophisticated understanding of dynamics in a single degree of freedom. We will present these works in sections 5.1 and 5.2 respectively, following which we’ll make some general remarks and discuss Hermann’s treatment of simple harmonic motion in section 5.3.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1981 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cannon, J.T., Dostrovsky, S. (1981). Hermann (1716). In: The Evolution of Dynamics: Vibration Theory from 1687 to 1742. Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, vol 6. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9461-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9461-7_5
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-9463-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-9461-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive