Ewald Hering's (1879) "On Muscle Sounds of the Eye": A translation and commentary

Abstract

Investigations of eye movements were transformed by Ewald Hering in 1879. He developed a novel method for recording them using the muscular sounds attendant on their rapid movements. Brief "clapping" sounds could be heard with the aid of a device like a stethoscope placed on the eyelid and they occurred when afterimages or "floaters" were seen to move. Hering applied the technique to record eye movements during reading and he called the rapid eye movements Rucke (jerks in English). Hering published a long review of eye movements and spatial vision later in 1879, but without a description of the muscle sounds. Hering's insightful article has been overlooked and a translation of it into English is presented.

Keywords: Hering; afterimages; eye movements; reading; saccades.

Figure 1.

The sounds of eye movements by Nicholas Wade. A portrait of Ewald Hering (derived from an illustration in Lesky, 1965) and the first page of his article describing the sounds heard when the eye moves (Hering, 1879a).