Biography

John Reid is an acoustics engineer who studied the acoustics of public buildings, churches and cathedrals for thirty years in his role as a consultant with a private company. He retired from business in 1999 in order to follow a career in specialist acoustics research and he is the inventor of CymaScope, a machine with worldwide patents which exhibits the complex structure of sound in a visual medium. The CymaGlyph patterns, which appear on a membrane, are then analysed mathematically. This Cymatics research led him to use the technique to study the acoustics of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid, where he stretched a membrane over the sarcophagus and sat back to watch, for the first time in history, the harmonic structure of the 4-ton granite box.

The results of this research led to a unique hypothesis, in collaboration with his colleague, David Elkington, author of In the Name of the Gods, to which John also contributed. Their joint work may explain how the language and iconography of a culture are linked at a fundamental level. John has a booklet Egyptian Sonics which gives a detailed account of his sonics research in Egypt