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Relaxation oscillations are commonly associated with the name of Balthazarvan der Pol via his eponymous paper (Philosophical Magazine, 1926) in which heapparently introduced this terminology to describe the nonlinear oscillationsproduced by self-sustained oscillating systems such as a triode circuit. Ouraim is to investigate how relaxation oscillations were actually discovered.Browsing the literature from the late 19th century, we identified fourself-oscillating systems in which relaxation oscillations have been observed:i) the series dynamo machine conducted by G\'erard-Lescuyer (1880), ii) themusical arc discovered by Duddell (1901) and investigated by Blondel (1905),iii) the triode invented by de Forest (1907) and, iv) the multivibratorelaborated by Abraham and Bloch (1917). The differential equation describingsuch a self-oscillating system was proposed by Poincar\'e for the musical arc(1908), by Janet for the series dynamo machine (1919), and by Blondel for thetriode (1919). Once Janet (1919) established that these three self-oscillatingsystems can be described by the same equation, van der Pol proposed (1926) ageneric dimensionless equation which captures the relevant dynamical propertiesshared by these systems. Van der Pol's contributions during the period of1926-1930 were investigated to show how, with Le Corbeiller's help, hepopularized the "relaxation oscillations" using the previous experiments asexamples and, turned them into a concept.

Van der Pol and the history of relaxation oscillations: toward the emergence of a concept