[10] “It is not possible to sound a stretched string as a whole without at the same time causing to a greater or less extent its subdivision; that is to say, superposed upon the vibrations of the string we have always, in a greater or less degree, the vibrations of its aliquot parts. The higher notes produced by these latter vibrations are called the _harmonics_ of the string. And so it is with other sounding bodies; we have, in all cases, a co-existence of vibrations. Higher tones mingle with the fundamental tone, and it is their intermixture which determines what, for want of a better term, we call the _quality_ of the sound. The French call it _timbre_, and the Germans call it _Klangfarbe_. It is this union of high and low tones that enables us to distinguish one musical instrument from another. A clarionet and a violin, for example, though tuned to the same fundamental note, are not confounded.... “All bodies and instruments, then, employed for producing musical sounds, emit, besides their fundamental tones, tones due to higher order of vibrations. The Germans embrace all such sounds under the general term _Obertöne_. I think it will be an advantage if we, in England, adopt the term _over-tones_, as the equivalent of the term employed in Germany. One has occasion to envy the power of the German language to adapt itself to requirements of this nature. The term _Klangfarbe_, for example, employed by Helmholtz, is exceedingly expressive, and we need its equivalent also. You know that color depends upon rapidity of vibrations--that blue light bears to red the same relation that a high tone does to a low one. A simple color has but one rate of vibration, and it may be regarded as the analogue of a simple tone in music. A _tone_, then, may be defined as the product of a vibration which cannot be decomposed into more simple ones. A compound color, on the contrary, is produced by the admixture of two or more simple ones; and an assemblage of tones, such, as we obtain when the fundamental tone and the harmonics of a string sound together, is called by the Germans a _Klang_. May we not employ the English word _clang_ to denote the same thing, and thus give the term a precise scientific meaning akin to its popular one? And may we not, like Helmholtz, add the word _color_ or _tint_ to denote the character of the clang, using the term _clang-tint_ as the equivalent of _Klangfarbe_?” (Sound: A course of Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain by John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Nat. Phil. in the Royal Institution and in the Royal School of Mines. English edition, pp. 116-118.)--Tr.