# How did ancient people describe the Doppler effect?

I've noticed the Doppler effect in the change of pitch of music as I ride past on my bicycle, so I assume in the old days people did this on horses too. Are there any ancient mentions or theories about this, maybe the ancient greeks?

• They did not. The Doppler effect for sound was noticed only 3 years after Doppler described it for light in 1842. Wave propagation was not studied much before 19th century, and observations were much more basic. – Conifold Nov 17 '17 at 2:42
• @Conifold Acoustics (studied in "music", in the quadrivium sense) has a millennia-long history, though. – Geremia Nov 17 '17 at 3:04
• @Geremia Yes, but neither Pythagoreans, nor Aristotle, nor even Leonardo and Galileo listened to music while riding horses, as far as I know. Even the connection between frequency and pitch was only noticed in 17th century. – Conifold Nov 17 '17 at 3:08
• @Conifold Alexandre Eremenko's answer below does help explain how it would be hard to notice. – Geremia Nov 17 '17 at 17:17
• If you know what you're expecting, it's extremely trivial to observe the Doppler effect for sound using even the most primitive equipment. But many people probably weren't expecting it, or if they did notice it, they didn't think of it as something scientifically interesting. – Ben Crowell Nov 18 '17 at 1:24

Have you really performed the experiment with riding a bicycle past a music source? I do not know with what speed you can ride your bicycle, but with a generous assumption of $10$m/sec, I arrive at the frequency distortion of $1.03$. This is less than half-tone (the ratio of the frequencies of two neighboring piano keys (black and white). So I imagine that "an ancient" standing and listening how a horseman riding past him at a full speed sounds a horn will not notice much difference. To have this $1.03$ frequency change, the horseman has to ride straight at you; if he passes you at some distance, the effect will not be sharp but gradual. And the horseman has to produce the same note on his horn, continuously. So I doubt that this was noticed.