Pure tones have been used by 19th century physicists like Georg Ohm and Hermann von Helmholtz to support theories asserting that the ear functions in a way equivalent to a Fourier frequency analysis. In Ohm's acoustic law, later further elaborated by Helmholtz, musical tones are perceived as a set of pure tones. The percept of pitch depends on the frequency of the most prominent tone, and the phases of the individual components is discarded. This theory has often been blamed for creating a confusion between pitch, frequency and pure tones.