Megan Watts Hughes (12 February 1842 – 29 October 1907) was a Welsh singer, songwriter, scientist and philanthropist. She is also known for being the first to observe the phenomenon of "Voice-Figures", while experimenting with a device she called an "eidophone". This device enabled the vibrations of sound to be visualised and she demonstrated this to the Royal Society. Megad Watts Hughes
Voice Figures
In 1885, while exercising her voice, she accidentally discovered what she called "voice-figures" or "voice-flowers", patterns created by the natural phenomenon of standing-wave resonance. She described the process by which she used "a thin layer of liquid" on the disc of the eidophone to assess whether the voice is singing the note "too forcibly", and found that liquids such as colored glycerine produced intricate, flower-like patterns in the liquid. In this she was unknowingly elaborating on research begun by Ernst Chladni, who used powder rather than liquid to make the patterns. She later demonstrated these at a meeting of the Royal Society. She wrote a scientific paper in 1891 and she also wrote a short book on the subject entitled The Eidophone Voice Figures: Geometrical and Natural Forms Produced by Vibrations of the Human Voice, published in 1904. Wikipedia, Voice Figures
A bit of history written here:
See Also
Cymatics
Cymatics - Jenny
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni
Hans Jenny
Modal Analysis
Robert Hooke