The Physics Department at the University of Toronto has one of the largest collections of Rudolph Koenig acoustical instruments in the world. They were bought in 1878 and formed the core instrumentation of the first teaching laboratory in Canada. To mark the dismantling of the long-standing display of Koenig instruments in the McLennan building, I am going to talk about the other Koenig collections in Europe and North America. There are significant collections at La Sapienza in Rome, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Moscow University, the Séminaire in Quebec City, Harvard, MIT and the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Each collection has a rich local context of acquisition and use. By studying and comparing these collections and instruments we learn much about the shared material and social dimensions of physics during a formative period for university research and teaching.

Wave Siren, Physics Department, La Sapienza, Rome