[meteorite-list] Happy ***250th*** Birthday, Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni !!! (AD)

[Martin Altmann]

Hola list,

it isn't only Chladni's Birthday, it is his 250th Birthday!!

Time to tell a little bit more about this ingenious and venturous hero!

Chladni was born on 30th of November 1756 in Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt.
He grew up in relatively narrow circumstance, his father was dean of the
local faculty of laws, rigorously educating him for a safe life-time job as
jurist. Thus, despite his affinity to natural sciences he absolved a study
of laws and philosophy. Shortly after his exams his father died and Chladni
came to a plucky decision and sat at nought the comfort perspective to work
as jurist and planned to dedicate his life to science.
He jobbed in giving lectures in science and mathematics at the university of
Wittenberg, but because the payments were meager, nor any regular employment
in sight, he set his mind on inventing and discovering something new and
chose for that the field of acoustics as he had also a foible for music,
although he hadn't any lessons in music before he was 19.
Immediately as it should be with a genius he found his famous figures of
sound and invented several new musical instruments. In 1787 he published his
first important work: "Discoveries about the Theory of Sound".
He improved his new instrument, the Euphone, until it was ready for his
purposes, to accentuate his planned lectures for his Road Show.
He bought a cart et voila then he was on the road for the rest of his life. 
He travelled through whole Europe, giving cycles of lectures for the bread
and butter, maintained his studies in hunting for rare scientific works in
the local libraries and corresponded with and met the great savants of these
times like Humboldt, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Schreibers, Laplace...
His best guest performances he had once in 1817 in Hamburg, where he acted
out in 3 cycles a 12 lectures and 1808 when he lectured to Napoleon, who
rewarded him with 6000 Francs (very fair, because later during the
liberation wars, his little home near Wittenberg planned for retirement
burned down).
Chladni, if you ask a physicist today, is known as the pioneer and father of
modern acoustics and not so much because of the discovery about the true
nature of meteorites and indeed the acoustics were always Chladni's main
occupation.
In 1802 he published his epoch making book "Die Akustik", Napoleon's cash he
used for publishing an enlarged edition in French in 1809.
The first contact with the ideas about meteorites he had in 1793, when he
met Lichtenberg. It took only one year then, until Chladni published his for
us so famous treaty: "Über den Urpsrung der von Pallas gefundenen und
anderer ihr ähnlicher Eisenmassen".
(About the Origin of the Pallas-iron and similar masses).
His theory about the extraterrestrial origin of the meteorites stayed
disregarded until the large shower of L'Aigle in 1803.
Nevertheless meteorites were his obsession, on his travels he assembled a
collection of meteorites in buying, swapping and by donations and started to

collect all reports about fireballs, falls and stones in the libraries of
the cities, he was coming through.
In the period from 1816 to 1819 he planned his routes so, that he was able
to visit as much meteorites as possible and from 1816 on, meteorites,
together with the demonstrative material from his collection, were a topic
in his popular lectures.
Result of his researches was his comprehensive book (434pages) of 1819:
"Über Feuermeteore und über die mit denselben herabgefallenen Massen".
(About the fiery meteors and the masses which felt with them (or so)).
All his life long Chladni was yearning for a regular employment and although
he had prominent interceders, never such a position was grated to him, so
that he had to carry on with his burdensome life as a scientific nomad.
At the age of 70 years, he died on 3rd of April 1827 on the road in a motel
in Wroclaw.
The exact place of his grave is forgotten.
By will Chladni disposed of his meteorite collection to the museum in
Berlin, where today the largest part of it rots somewhere in some drawers in
stack. Ooops, not to be unfair - I strongly hope, that the museum opened a
special exhibition for Chladni's 250th Birthday, but can't find nothing in
the internet. (So if you haven't a special Chladni Show there, shame on
you!)


Hey Mark, good idea, let's make your wishes come true!

Chladni was the first one, who popularized meteorites to a broad audience.

So for his birthday we crafted 2 dozens++ more of the fine Chladni Cases
with our fresh granulitic NWA 4483 Moon.
For collectors with small budgets. Mainly we tinkered those of size S,
today for the birthday price is not 45$ per piece but 35$.
Aaand we made some of size XS for 15$ only, so that really everyone could
afford a piece of Moon (as long as stock lasts, I think they are also nice
for Christmas presents).
Airmail shipment to USA 3$, Europe & Germany 2.5$. 

You find an example for the boxes here:
http://www.chladnis-heirs.com/special.html

We made different designs: with astronaut on Moon, with the Moon car, the
famous foot print, lunar landscape with Earth in the Sky and so on.
Texts in English or German.

Slices you want Mark?

Well, here we have to beg the owner of the main masses of the respective
numbers or paired material first, for not taking these offers now for a
competitive offence, we will offer only a single piece each for this special
occasion - so often there isn't a Chladni jubilee!

O.k. for the Birthday:

Take one of the slices of NWA 4483, pictured on linked page above,larger
than 1g.
(some are sold, sorry if so, we are preparing the Hamburg show, thus a
little chaos here).
Our regular price is 1500$/g, our promotional price was 1200$/g et voila
"600$/g" we sing today!

Additionally we have left a fine rectangular partslice of the classical and
very fresh fragmental breccia, 
Dhofar 910
Found 2003, tkw 142.9g.
It has 0.94g   800$ the piece today!

Furthermore
A really amazing colourful slice of the lunar IMB, impressive and
impressionistic:  
Dhofar 1085
(found 2003,tkw 197g)
3.08g  2000$ the piece.

And that's not all:
Paired with Dho 1085 is Dho 911 (tkw 191g).
A nice partslice you can have, 2.34g  @1550$.

Last but not least,
a slice of the new, but still secret and provisional
Mare basalt breccia NWA 4485, so far unpaired
(tkw 188g)
2.520g for Chladni's sake 1000$/g  (later we'll ask more than twice as
much).

Drunk offers, but we're sober!

Cheers on Father CHLADNI, Salute to Chladni's Heirs!!!

Stefan, Martin & Andi 









-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von mark
ford
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 30. November 2006 12:48
An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] Happy Birthday, Ernst Florens Friedrich!


Let's hope they all get drunk and sell off some wonderful Lunar slices by
mistake :) lol.



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