And now Sarraccus had given the flowers a voice to sing of their
beauty. In the mind of this great genius was conceived the idea that
inasmuch as there is ineffable beauty to the eye in the soft colors and
shades of a flower--beauty too rare for the hand of man to
reproduce--there must also be a corresponding sweetness of sound or
vibration, if it were possible to transform its beauty into sound.
Light-waves, he reasoned, varying according to the color and shade of
the object, might be changed into sound-waves, if an instrument were
made sensitive enough to vibrate in response to these extremely delicate
undulations of light. The vibrations would then vary in accordance with
the light-waves, and a harmony of sound, corresponding in sweetness to
the beauty of the flower, would result.
After many unsuccessful trials, Sarraccus found a material that, in the
form of a fine wire, twenty or thirty feet in length, vibrated in
response to light of a certain color, as a wire in a piano or harp will
often be attuned sympathetically to a certain note in the human voice,
and will vibrate whenever that note is reached. The vibrations of this
wire in response to light, however, were almost imperceptible, and it
was only upon testing with a highly sensitive instrument that they were
discovered.
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