Os fundamentos das investigações de Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854) sobre a definição de tom

Abstract

It is known that the Fourier series was an important contribution developed and consolidated in the early nineteenth century and used later in several applications. However, historical works on the subject have generally not sought to understand how such a tool, having been developed by Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) in his studies of heat, ended up being used by Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854) in his investigation of the definition of tone. In fact, there is no simple answer to this question since there are no explicit statements about it. However, the observation of changes in the way of doing science in Germanic lands, where Ohm was inserted, and his inspiration in the works of Fourier and other French scholars, helps to understand what would have made possible such a change of context for the series in question. These works would have contributed for Ohm to use certain mathematical tools in a more abstract way than usual in relation to the standards of the time and place. Such an approach, besides having allowed the mentioned change of context, would have helped the scholar to move towards a unifying theory in which the tones produced by the "new" instruments of the time – the siren and the cogwheel – would be considered consistent with the "old definition of tone" coming from the eighteenth-century vibrating string studies