On the developments of psychoacoustics in the Netherlands in the first half of the 20th century

Formally psychoacoustics started after ~1950, but during the preceding period many basic elements emerged. Traditionally the Netherlands’ developments were most directly linked to European mainland schools, but in the forties British and American interests took over most links. The great wars during this period stimulated an interest in information transmission (telephone and radio) and later in (de)coding. The development of smaller electronic devices had a spin off for the hearing impaired—portable hearing aids (Philips). Two researchers active in these fields were E. ter Kuile and J. F. Schouten. Ter Kuile received his Ph.D. degree in Amsterdam (1904), Schouten his in Utrecht (1937). Ter Kuile was the first investigator with a theory about the function of the tectorial membrane and the cochlear haircells, but he was also interested in the role of waveform and spectra re timbre and speech properties. Schouten, after his PhD in vision, switched to hearing at Philips “Nat.Lab” in Eindhoven, and worked on the case of “the missing fundamental,” for which he introduced the term “residue.” Again a problem in which spectral and temporal coding are competitive. Whereas Ter Kuile strongly builds on Helmholtz, after 1945 Schouten got in touch with colleagues at MIT and Bell-Labs.