Harpsichord Wires as Multifaceted Materials in Scientific Experiments from the Eighteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

The supply of experimental materials greatly influences the practice of science. Before the establishment of modern commercial distribution systems for experimental materials, researchers often used mundane substances. The wires of the harpsichord, a representative keyboard instrument of the Baroque era, were used as "multifaceted materials" in physical and chemical experiments from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Because the wires were made of largely pure iron, they were utilised as a standard substance in permanganometry until their impurities proved experimentally problematic. Although the early wires gradually disappeared from chemical experiments around the beginning of the twentieth century, they were reincarnated as steel wires with the advent of the modern harpsichord and reemerged as actors on the musical stage in the context of Neoclassical music. As a result of shifting practices in the use of harpsichord wires, the concept of a standard substance in titration gradually took shape at the intersection of the histories of science and music.