Talk:Pythagorean hammers

Simple ratio?

I'm not sure that the dissonant ratio was 9:8 -- where does this come from? In Iamblichus's description, it's said to not be a simple ratio (http://www.notam02.no/renstemming/pythagoras-e.html) -- which 9:8 would almost certainly be considered one. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:40, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The 9:8 ratio was mentioned in the earliest account of the story by Nicomachus, from the second century CE. Terez27 (talk) 16:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Article subject is a myth

I was having a difficult time finding anywhere on the internet the truth about the Pythagorean hammers; the story is clearly mythical, but everyone treats it as scientific truth (probably because the truth of the perfect proportions can be so easily demonstrated with strings that most people do not question whether the same would be true for hammers, or not). Anyway, fixed now (also on the main Pythagoras page), and I gave two sources. Terez27 (talk) 17:01, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you seen the much longer German version of this article? I don't speak German, but used the Google page translate option.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras_in_der_Schmiede

I suppose the basic revelation is the simple connection between pitch and maths. On the German page it suggests chisels as an alternative to hammerss.--Annielogue (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

No, I hadn't seen that page. Did you add the third paragraph? If so, thanks — that's a good way to balance the article. Terez27 (talk) 21:53, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

German Article Added

Thanks to User:Annielogue for pointing out that the German article is longer. In order to improve this article, I have added the German article to it. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 16:51, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Reference to The Fifth Hammer by Daniel Heller-Roazen is incorrect

From the article:

Even more recently, accounts have been published in which the legend is uncritically reproduced without reference to its physical and historical falsehood. For example, in the non-fiction book The Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World by Daniel Heller-Roazen.

In my copy of the book, chapter 5, page 62 makes it clear that the legend's connection of pitch to the hammers' weights is false:

Two strings whose lengths stand in the relation of two to one will produce an octave, but, [Vincenzo] Galilei discovered, objects whose weights are in that ratio will not...In short: the harmonic proportions derived from strings must be squared for them to hold for mass.

Dr-regularlove (talk) 23:33, 22 April 2026 (UTC)