John Stuart Reid

John Stuart Reid is an acoustics researcher whose career in sound spans around five decades. He is best known as the inventor of the CymaScope, an instrument that uses the surface of pure water to make the patterns of sound visible, and he founded Sonic Age Ltd in the UK, with a later American division, to develop and research it. His studies have ranged from the geometry of musical notes and the human voice to dolphin sounds and acoustic experiments in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, which he wrote up as Egyptian Sonics.

He teaches cymatics, the study of visible sound, through lectures, conference talks and interviews in Europe and America, explaining the physics of sound and the history of the field in plain terms. He writes short studies on subjects such as the pioneer Margaret Watts-Hughes, concert pitch, and the link between sound and light, which are sold as downloads through the CymaScope shop, and he directs research with collaborators across several sciences. He also teaches online courses on sonic science and cymatics through The Shift Network.