Ocean Acoustics Education and Expertise (2025)
Chapter: Appendix C: Ocean Acoustics Historical Timeline
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Suggested Citation:
"Appendix C: Ocean Acoustics Historical Timeline." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Ocean Acoustics Education and Expertise. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
doi: 10.17226/27337.
Appendix C
Ocean Acoustics Historical Timeline1
- Aristotle (384–322 BC) was among the first to note that sound could be heard underwater.
- 1490: Leonardo da Vinci observed that ships could be heard at great distances underwater.
- 1687: Sir Isaac Newton first published mathematical theory of how sound travels.
- 1743: Abbé J. A. Nollet’s experiments confirmed sound could travel through water.
- 1826: Jean-Daniel Colladon and Charles-Francois Sturm performed the Lake Geneva first attempts to determine the speed of sound underwater.
- 1859: Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury (USN) conducted the first attempt to use sound to measure ocean depth and failed because he did not use an underwater receiver to listen for the echo.
- 1877 & 1878: Lord Rayleigh published The Theory of Sound, the beginning of the modern study of acoustics.
- 1914: Fressenden developed and successfully tested echo ranging systems.
- 1923: Submarine Signal Company developed and marketed the “fathometer,” a low-frequency echosounder to measure depth.
- 1914–1918: WWI sound receivers were installed on ships to listen for submarine engines or propellers.
- 1917: Paul Langevin built an echo ranging system that could detect a submarine as far as 1,500 m away.
- 1920–1930s: It was discovered that low-frequency sound could penetrate the seafloor.
- 1924–1929: Fisheries acoustics began, using sound to detect fish.
- 1929: ASA was founded as part of the American Institute of Physics.
- 1944: Maurice Ewing and Joe Worzel discovered the SOFAR (SOund Fixing And Ranging) Channel.
- 1941–1945: Knudsen curves, which compare noise level and windspeed, were developed; sonar was developed and improved.
- 1950: ONR funded AT&T to develop undersea surveillance system to detect the Soviets during Cold War, called “SOund SUrveillance System” or the unclassified designation, Project Caesar. It continued through the 1980s.
- 1980s: The Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System was deployed. The overall system (including both the fixed and towed arrays) was called the “Integrated Undersea Surveillance System.”
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1 DOSITS website: https://dosits.org/people-and-sound/history-of-underwater-acoustics.
Suggested Citation:
"Appendix C: Ocean Acoustics Historical Timeline." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Ocean Acoustics Education and Expertise. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
doi: 10.17226/27337.
- 1991: The Herd Island Feasibility Test was conducted to determine that human-made sound could travel across ocean basins and provide information about ocean conditions based on travel times of sound signal.
- 2010s. USN permitted civilian scientists more access to the SOSUS system for basic research (e.g., the study of underwater volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, marine mammals and their vocalizations, and measurement of large-scale ocean temperature variability).
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