For many scientific writers, sound itself was part of a divine, ethereal realm that had only recently, through experimental science, drawn slightly closer. Something about sound itself readily moved the Victorian mind in a spiritual direction. Whether the grains of sand in Chladni’s experiment that seemed to be moved by unseen hands, or the mysterious forces that seemed to be channeled in other demonstrations, sound itself stood in for powerful forces of other kinds. Now that sound could be seen, perhaps other once-invisible energies might also reveal themselves. It is not too much of a leap from thinking about the effect of sound waves on matter to that of spirit on matter. In this way, the newly discovered visibility of sound in the Victorian age has obvious parallels with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation: here, too, albeit on a far smaller and more manageable scale, a once-distant and invisible force was given physical form. The fact that spiritualism and theosophy were first becoming popular and widely practiced during this period also testifies to a broader interest in the ethereal realm. And since many artistic practices and new technologies were quickly pressed into the service of exploring such a realm, it is no surprise that science was too.