Equal Temperament a Chinese Idea ??

[Richard Moody]

----------
> From: Richard Brekne <richardb@c2i.net>
> To: PTG <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Subject: Equal Temperament a Chinese Idea ??
> Date: Friday, October 08, 1999 1:35 PM
> 
> An excerpt from an artical on Equal Temperament....by John H. Lienhard
> 
> 
> "The startling thing about all this is that the modern scheme of equal
> temperament isn't a Western one at all. Mersenne's book came out in
> 1636.
> But a very different author published the same theory a half-century
> earlier. It
> was published in 1584 by Chu Tsai-Yu, a prince of the Ming dynasty. 
>  That was 16 years before Mersenne; and Mersenne didn't mention
> Chu at all."

Mersenne might not have known of Tsai-Yu.  But Mersenne stated that Aristoxenes 
proposed ET almost 1000  years before.  It took 1400 years before the practice of
tuing it became "scientific".    In 1581 V Galilei (also reported by Mersenne) gave
18/17 for the spacing of lute frets which is within one cent of ET. .   ---ric