Good Vibrations : Signature modes of Old Italian violins & violas - part 2
By Joseph Curtin, The Strad, July 2009
In 1680, the year that Stradivari moved into his shop on the Piazza San Domenico, the English scientist Robert Hooke dusted a plate of glass with flour and then drew a violin bow across its edge. The bow set the glass into vibration, and the flour migrated to the areas that were moving least, making visible the patterns of vibration in the plate. Seven years later, Stradivari built the ornamented violin now known as the ‘Ole Bull’.