Three people sent me copies and I've sent copies to 4 people who requested them.
These are definitely in the public domain in the US at least (or so the cover page states),
so if anyone else wants a copy, just ask me.
I was particularly interested because of what Wilson and Myers said in 1908 about the "unwelcome hypothosesis" that phase could be compared centrally:
"... Thompson concluded that under the conditions of binaural hearing above
described, the tone-stimulus is transmitted along each auditory nerve to
some common cerebral centre and that at this centre the beats arise.
But this and the following interesting fact, also observed by Thompson,
can be explained without recourse to such an unwelcome hypothesis, if
we suppose that each tone is transmitted by bone conduction to the
opposite ear and that the beats heard are due to the play of the two
series of vibrations of different frequency on one and the same sense
organ"
I wondered if Thompson really proposed such an "unwelcome hypothesis", a central comparison of waveforms from the two sides. What I find it that he rather carefully danced around the idea, suggesting it but not saying it, and trying to rule out bone conduction, in 1877:
"5. It is not easy to explain why interference-beats should
thus occur in the simultaneous individual action of the two ears, while combinational tones (difference-tones) are inaudible. There is in the case of the auditory nerves, or portio mollis, no decussation like that of the optic nerves;
the former do not intersect after leaving the fourth ventricle,
in which they have their common origin, and from which
they diverge ri ht and left.
_ There is in health
a possible
communication between the ears across the pharynx, through
the Eustachian tubes. Moreover the bone of the skull itself
is capable of conveying sonorous tremors, which might account
for both ears hearing
a sound entering by one only. In
either of these latter cases, however, there would be no reason why combinational tones should not be equally audible in
binaural as in monaural audition; so that we are driven to
the hypothesis that any means of comparison which may
exist in the nerve systems of the ears exists deep-seated in
the actual structure of the brain. This may be the reason
why dissonances are in binaural audition so excessively dis
agreeable, and why even ordinary consonant intervals become
harsh. They evoke
a discontinuous sensation when there is
no opportunity of their blending previously to acting upon
the sensitive mechanism of the nerve-structures. The discontinuity of the sensation produces an intensity of effect
exceeding that of
a continuous one. Hence sounds all but in
audible themselves may yield, as noted in No. 2, very well
marked beats, enabling the ear thus to detect the most delicate differences of tone.
He seems to neglect the possibility that the signals could be compared in the brainstem (where we now know the olivary complex does just that).