Tonograph

After then, the instrument went lost, but in 1932 ca., thanks to the work of a scholar, it was found in a cellar and exhibited at the Museo Galileo, located in Piazza dei Giudici, Florence.

Cagnazzi assumes that there is roughly an inverse proportionality between the length of a closed cylindrical tube and the sound's frequency.

The diatonic and chromatic scales of music didn't have enough notches to accurately represent the tone and intensity of human voice.

[11] Luca de Samuele Cagnazzi provides an example of the use of the tonograph based on a notable verse by Ennius (Andromache): O pater,    O patria,   O Priami  domus!180 170 160  165 155 145  170 160  150 160   2        2       1     1From the example above, it's clear that the purpose of the device is to help store the features of human voice, its tones and music.

[12] Cagnazzi faces the impossibility (with some exceptions) of faithfully reconstructing the tones and inflections of the voice that the Ancient Greeks and the Romans used in their survived works.

The same inventor, in the first part of his essay Tonografia escogitata (1841) made some acute observations on both linguistics and music; he also explained, in the preface, the purpose of his work as well as of his invention: Remarkable men in literature and science of the present age, to the extent that my clouded mind allowed me to reach, I managed to lay the foundations for the Tonography: now it is your duty to improve this work; since, if it is not possible to know and imitate the music of the eloquence of the classical age, let the posterity at least know about ours somehow.

Its perpetual secretary Charles Pinot Duclos wrote that abbot Jean-Baptiste Dubos proposed to create a group of experts in the field of music, in order to identify and distinguish fractions of the human voice's diatonic scale.

The failure led the Académie to jump to the conclusion that distinguishing between fractions of the diatonic scale was simply impossible, and alternative methods, based on science and mathematics, weren't taken into account.