The mel scale defines pitch by assigning 1000 mels to a 1000-Hz tone

Evidence

In 1937, Stevens, Volkmann, and Newman (1937) employed a magnitude production technique to determine the relationship between the pitch of a pure tone and its frequency. In this seminal study, Stevens et al. presented a reference tone to listeners and asked them to adjust the frequency of another tone so that its pitch was estimated to be 1/2 that of the reference. In this way, they measured the relationship between the pitch of one sound and another. Stevens et al. then assigned the number of 1000 to the 1000-Hz tone, and called the unit of pitch the mel, where 1000 mels is defined as the pitch associated with a 1000- Hz tone. The mel scale can be interpreted in the following way: 500 mels corresponds to a pitch ½ that of 1000 Hz and 2000 mels would be a pitch twice that of the pitch at 1000 Hz. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1238

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mel as a unit of perceived pitch, anchored to 1000 Hz.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1238