text: Tollmien (1931) and Schlichting (1929) theorized that viscosity-induced grabbing and releasing of laminae created long-crested simple harmonic (SH) oscillations (vibrations) along a smooth flat boundary, at a flow rate approaching the onset of turbulence. These T-S waves would gradually increase in amplitude until they broke up into the vortices, noise and high resistance that characterize turbulent flow. Contemporary wind tunnels failed to show T-S waves.
  In 1943, Schubauer and Skramstad (S and S) created a wind tunnel that went to extremes to damp mechanical vibrations and sounds that might affect the airflow studies along a smooth flat plate. Using a vertical array of evenly spaced hot wire anemometers in the boundary layer (BL) airflow, they substantiated the existence of T-S oscillations by showing SH velocity fluctuations in the BL laminae.  The T-S waves gradually increased in amplitude until a few random spikes of in-phase amplitude appeared, triggering focal vortices (turbulent spots), with noise. A further increase in flow rate resulted suddenly in many vortices, aerodynamic noise and a great increase in resistance to flow. An oscillation of a mass in a fluid creates a sound wave; SH oscillations of a mass of fluid, flowing in that same fluid along a boundary, must result in SH sound, reflected off the boundary, transversely into the fluid.
  S and S found foci of in-phase spiking amplitude in the T-S waves; these must create bursts of high amplitude sound, with high energy oscillation of fluid molecules transversely through the BL laminae.  This has the potential to freeze laminar slip (laminar interlocking) in these spots, transferring the resistance to the boundary: this breaking at the boundary could rip out pieces of T-S long-crested waves which would tumble head-over-heels downstream in the boundary layer as the vortices of turbulent spots. With further increase in flow rate, there is an explosion into turbulence, with many random vortices and the noise of aerodynamic sound.
  Schubauer and Skramstad overlooked the significance of the co-generation of transverse SH sound by the T-S waves in transition and turbulence. However, John Tyndall (1867) in his transition-to-turbulence flow studies using flames, deduced that SH waves were created during transition by viscosity acting around the walls of a tube and these could be amplified by blending with similar SH sound waves (from a whistle), triggering turbulence at lower flow rates.  Schubauer and Skramstad introduced SH sound into the boundary layer by creating SH fluttering vibrations of a BL ferromagnetic ribbon in their 1941 experiments, similarly triggering turbulence at lower flow rates.
  Tyndall’s contribution towards explaining the mystery of transition to turbulence 150 years ago is beginning to gain recognition.