Before the new year, we brought you a video of Russian polymath inventor Leon Theremin demonstrating the strange instrument that bears his last name, and we noted that the theremin was the first electronic musical instrument. Although this is not strictly true, it was the first mass-produced electronic musical instrument and is widely used for original composition and performance. However, like biological evolution, the history of musical instrument development is littered with dead ends, anomalies, and forgotten ancestors (such as the octobass). One such obscure oddity is that telharmoniumIt predates the theremin by almost 20 years and was patented by an American inventor. Thaddeus CahillEven earlier, in 1897 (see some of the many illustrations from the original patent below).
Cahill, a lawyer who had previously invented devices for pianos and typewriters, created the telharmonium (also known as the dynamaphone) for broadcasting music over the telephone. This was a forerunner of the later scourge of telephone hold music, not theremin. “In a big way,” writes Jay Williston on Synthmuseum.com, “Cahill invented what we know today as ‘Muzak.'”
He built the first prototype telharmonium, the Mark I, in 1901. Its weight was 7 tons. The instrument’s final form, the Mark III, took 50 people to build at a cost of $200,000, and was “60 feet long, weighed about 200 tons, and contained over 2,000 electrical switches. Music was usually played by two people (four hands), and was mostly classical works by Bach, Chopin, Greig, and Rossini.” (look here a few photos. )
Needless to say, this was a very impractical device. Nevertheless, Cahill not only found willing investors for this huge device, but also found success in New York, after demonstrating it in Baltimore, taking it apart and traveling by train. By 1905, his New England Electric Music Company “contracted with the New York Telephone Company to install special lines so that the signal from the Telharmonium could be transmitted throughout the city.” Cahill used the term “synthesis” in his patents, which has led some to say that the Telharmonium was the first synthesizer, but its operation was both electronic and mechanical, using a complex series of gears and cylinders to reproduce the range of a piano. (See the operation explained in the video above.) “The raised irregularities on the cylinder helped create the contours of the music.” I will write popular mechanisms“Unlike a music box, the pitch is determined by the size of the cylinder.”
The huge and extremely loud Telharmonium Mark III was temporarily located in the basement of the Metropolitan Opera House while Cahill worked on a plan to stream music over telephone lines. However, this plan did not go smoothly. “The problem was this.” popular mechanisms “All cables leak radio waves, and sending huge amplified signals over early 20th century telephone lines was always going to cause problems.” The Telharmonium caused interference with other telephone lines and even disrupted naval radio communications. “According to rumors” Douglas Anderson School of Art “A New York businessman, enraged by the constant network interference, broke into the building where the Telharmonium was housed, destroyed it, and threw pieces of the machine into the Hudson River below,” he wrote.
Although unlikely, it serves as a symbol of the instrument’s demise. Cahill’s company was disbanded in 1908, but the last Telharmonium is said to have remained in operation until 1916. No recordings of the instrument survived, and Thaddeus Cahill’s brother Arthur ultimately sold the last prototype for scrap in 1950, unable to find a buyer. The entire rationale for this equipment had been superseded by radio broadcasting. Telharmonium may not have caught on, but it still had a huge impact. Its unique design makes it another important electronic musical instrument, hammond organ. And its very existence gave musical futurists a vision. The Douglas Anderson School writes:
Despite its eventual demise, Telharmonium was the catalyst for the birth of electronic music. At the height of its popularity, the Italian composer and intellectual Ferruccio Busoni was inspired by the machine to write Sketch of a New Musical Aesthetics (1907), which eventually became the clarion and inspiration for a new generation of electronic composers such as Edgardo Varese and Luigi Russolo.
The device also made quite an impression on another American inventor, Mark Twain. He enthusiastically demonstrated the device over the phone after giving a speech at a New Year’s gathering at his home about his considerable status as an innovator and early adopter of new technology. “Unfortunately for Thaddeus Cahill,” wrote William Weir. of hartford coolant“Twain’s support was not enough to make the Telharmonium a success.” Read more about the instrument’s history here book.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2016.
Related content:
Soviet inventor Leon Theremin shows off the theremin, an early electronic instrument that can be played without touching it (1954)
History of Electronic Music, 1800-2015: Free Web Project Catalog, Theremin, Fairlight, and Other Instruments That Revolutionized Music
The fascinating story of how electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire created her originals. doctor who Theme (1963)
Listen to 7 Hours of Women Making Electronic Music (1938-2014)
Thomas Dolby explains how synthesizers work on Jim Henson’s children’s show (1989)
josh jones I’m a writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
