Re (2): [Bell Historians] Using tuning forks.

[s.ivin at n...]

DJB:

> Is the St Paul's tenor maiden then?

I think from memory that the answer is yes, but of course it does have a sharp
hum & a flat fundamental, though not very much so. It seems to be relatively 
easy to get the nominal pretty well right 'as cast'. And of course who is to say
that the tenor was not cast first - true it just happens to be v. close to
Bflat relative to modern standard pitch, but I guess that is/was irrelevant.
At that time Taylors were using a set of chromatic forks and recorded the
pitch as so many eighths of a tone (?semitone) flat or sharp. Interestingly
the scribe was writing 'ch. to' (short for 'chipped to') long after the use
of lathes! No, it is not short for 'changed to' - I spotted it written out
in full in one case!

The point about tuning forks is really that their use requires _ears_, except
perhaps by the method used by A B Simpson, involving resonance i.e. touching
the bell with the fork. Certainly the modern substitute of a sound generator
can be regarded as an equivalent process, but not if the generator is used
to probe the bell while readings are taken from the frequency meter or the
stroboscopic meter, though this makes it easier to do while surrounded by
noisy machinery or indeed if the operator is completely deaf.

It is not completely established that the pitch when the bell is 'driven'
by the probe is exactly the same as the bell struck with a clapper however.

Steve