| The nineteenth century physicist would not have phrase Fourier
synthesis. Instead, he would have talked about tones to form
various vowel sounds. The apparatus at the left is large
apparatus for compounding timbres of 10 harmonics ... 1,500
[$300]", which is item number 56 in the 1889 Koenig catalogue.
This apparatus is at the University of Toronto. |The ten
electrically-driven tuning forks, each facing a Helmholtz
resonator tuned to the same frequency, run continuously, but
produce little sound. Pressing one of the keys moves the dull
black shutter away from the hole of the resonator, and the sound
becomes quite loud. Rubber feet under the corners of the wooden
stand keep the vibrations from reaching the baseplate that runs
under all ten of the tuning fork systems.| |This is the back
view of the apparatus. The harmonic content of each of the
vowels had been previously determined through the use of the
Fourier analyzer, and they could then be reproduced with the
synthesizer. The relative strength of each ha