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Telharmonium

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The Telharmonium (also known as the Dynamophone[1]) was an early electrical organ, developed by Thaddeus Cahill c. 1896 and patented in 1897.[2][3][4] The electrical signal from the Telharmonium was transmitted over wires; it was heard on the receiving end by means of "horn" speakers.[5]

Telharmonium console by Thaddeus Cahill 1897.

Like the later Hammond organ, the Telharmonium used tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis.[5] It is considered to be the first electromechanical musical instrument.

Background

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  • 1809, Prussian Samuel Thomas Soemmerring created an electrical telegraph that triggered an array of tuned bells[6]
  • In 1885, Hermann Helmholtz’s ‘On the Sensations of Tone’ (1862) appeared in English[6]
  • Elisha Gray’s ‘Musical Telegraph’ of 1874[6]
  • In Paris, Clément Ader created the ‘Théâtrophone’ in 1881[6] using two lines to pass music from a local theater to two separate phone receivers, dubbed "binauriclar auduition", the first "stereo" concert via telephone.
  • In 1890 AT&T ceased work on a service to provide music, admitting difficulty with sound quality.[7][8][9][10][11]
  • In 1893 Hungarian Tivadar Puskás created the ‘Telefonhírmondó’ or ‘Telephone Herald’[6]

History

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In 1890's, Thaddeus Cahill was a lawyer living in Washington DC who invented devices for Pianos and Typewriters.[12]

"Cahill was working as a Congressional aide when he conceived the idea"[13]

The final design, patented in 1897, had twelve separate alternating-current generators, to generate electric waves, to produce the twelve basic tones of the musical scale, that would be controlled by a keyboard and heard through a telephone receiver.[14]

Cahill built three versions.[4][15][14] Each was an advancement over the features of its predecessor.

By 1901, Cahill had constructed a working model, to seek financial backing for a finished machine. The Mark I weighed 7 tons.[4][15][14][16]

The 1906 model, had 145 separate electric generators. The Mark II weighed almost 200 tons, was 60 feet long, had multiple keyboards and controls, and required at least two players.[4][15][14]

"As early as 1906, the Cahill Telharmonium Company of New York attempted to sell musical entertainment (produced by Dr. Thaddeus Cahill's "Telharmonium," an early synthesizer) to subscribers through the telephone. The Bell Telephone company, claiming that company equipment might be damaged, refused to give the company permission to use its lines, and the firm switched to radio technology"[17]
"Dr. Lee DeForest, of wireless telegraphy fame, made a series of successful tests with Telharmonic music currents, making the selection of the concert at Telharmonic hall clearly audible to hearers miles away without wires." — Passaic Daily News, Passaic, New Jersey, 16 March 1907, Page 6

The 1911, last Telharmonium, the Mark III, weighed almost 200 tons, was 60 feet long, had multiple keyboards and controls, and required at least two players, was installed in a special performance room in New York City.[4][15][14]

A small number of performances were given for live audiences, in addition to the telephone transmissions. Performances in New York City (some at "Telharmonic Hall", 39th and Broadway)[5] were well received by the public in 1906, with Mark Twain among the appreciative audience.[15] In these presentations, the performer sat at a console to control the instrument. The actual mechanism was so large it occupied an entire room; wires from the controlling console were fed discreetly through holes in the auditorium floor, into the instrument room below.

 
The workshop console of the telharmonium during its development at the New England Electric Music Company's Cabot Street Music Plant, in Holyoke, 1906.

The Telharmonium foreshadowed modern electronic musical equipment in a number of ways. For instance, its sound output came in the form of connecting ordinary telephone receivers to large paper cones—a primitive form of loudspeaker. Cahill stated that electromagnetic diaphragms were the most preferable means of outputting its distinctive sound. There are no known recordings of its music.[18]

The Telharmonium was retailed by Cahill for $200,000.[19]

The Telharmonium's demise came for a number of reasons. The instrument was immense in size and weight. This being an age before vacuum tubes had been invented, it required large electric dynamos which consumed great amounts of power in order to generate sufficiently strong audio signals.[20] In addition, problems began to arise when telephone broadcasts of Telharmonium music were subject to crosstalk and unsuspecting telephone users would be interrupted by strange electronic music.[6] By 1912, interest in this revolutionary instrument had changed, and Cahill's company was declared not successful in 1914.[4]

Cahill died in 1934; his younger brother retained the Mark I for decades, but was unable to interest anyone in it. This was the last version to be scrapped, in 1962.[5]

Design

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Patent 580035 was filed by Cahill for the Telharmonium in 1896
"The telharmonium generated its sounds using a system of alternators called "rheotomes." Each rheotome was actually a cog with a specific number of notched teeth. As the edge of the rheotome rotated against a wire brush (part of a larger circuit), the teeth would contact the brush a certain number of times each second, based on the rheotome's diameter. This resulted in the electrical oscillation of a sonic frequency."[21]

Telharmonium tones were described as "clear and pure"[5] — referring to the electronic sine wave tones it was capable of producing. However, it was not restricted to such simple sounds. Each tonewheel of the instrument corresponded to a single note, and, to broaden its possibilities, Cahill added several extra tonewheels to add harmonics to each note. This, combined with organ-like stops and multiple keyboards (the Telharmonium was polyphonic), as well as a number of foot pedals, meant that every sound could be sculpted and reshaped — the instrument was noted for its ability to reproduce the sounds of common orchestral woodwind instruments such as the flute, bassoon, clarinet, and also the cello. The Telharmonium needed 671 kilowatts[22][23] of power[5]:233 and had 153 keys that allowed it to work properly.[24][25]

Legacy

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"Ferruccio Busoni was inspired by the machine at the height of its popularity and moved to write his ‘Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music’ (1907) which in turn became the clarion call and inspiration for the new generation of electronic composers such as Edgard Varèse and Luigi Russolo."[26][27][28]

See also

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Further reading

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  • Shepard, Brian (1 January 2013). Refining Sound: A Practical Guide to Synthesis and Synthesizers. Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-992296-3.
  • Holmes, Thomas B. Electronic and Experimental Music. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985. pp. 32-41 ISBN 9780684181356
  • Scientific American vol 96 #10 9th March 1907
  • New Music for an Old World McClure's. v.27 1906 May-Oct.
  • The Telharmonium: A History of the First Music Synthesizer, review by Thomas L Rhea. Computer Music Journal, vol. 12 #3, 1988
  • Gunter’s Magazine (v5 #5, June 1907) The Home Publishing Company, 503-622pp
  • Telharmonic Hall Program

References

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  1. ^ "Chapter 6 – Digital Sound & Music". Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  2. ^ US patent 580035, Thaddeus Cahill, "Art of and apparatus for generating and distributing music electrically", issued 1897-04-06 , filed 1896-02-04.
  3. ^ Snyder, Jeff. "The Dynamophone (a.k.a. Telharmonium-The Great Grandpappy of the Modern Synthesizer) and Thaddeus Cahill". Lebanon Valley College. Archived from the original on 2009-03-02.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Williston, Jay (2000). "Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium". synthmuseum.com. specification...dated April 6, 1897", "application filed February 4, 1896", "weighed about 7 tons in all", "By 1906 the new Telharmonium...weighed almost 200 tons
  5. ^ a b c d e f Weidenaar, Reynold (1995). Magic Music from the Telharmonium. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. p. 436. ISBN 0-8108-2692-5. An authoritative history of the Telharmonium. Weidenaar produced a 29-minute documentary video, also called Magic Music from the Telharmonium. Magnetic Music Publishing Co. 1998. (See website for extensive additional documentation)
  6. ^ a b c d e f "The 'Telharmonium' or 'Dynamophone' Thaddeus Cahill, USA 1897". 120 Years of Electronic Music. 20 September 2013. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
  7. ^ "The Telharmonium". 2021-01-21. Archived from the original on 2021-01-21. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  8. ^ "Thaddeus Cahill's "Music Plant" The Telharmonium and the promise of electrical music on tap". Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  9. ^ "Thaddeus Cahill's Teleharmonium". Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  10. ^ Thomas Commerford Martin. "The Telharmonium: Electricity's Alliance With Music". Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  11. ^ "News and Entertainment by Telephone (1876-1930)". Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  12. ^ "Synthmuseum.com - Magazine". www.synthmuseum.com. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  13. ^ "F.Y.I. - NYTimes.com". The New York Times. 2015-05-27. Archived from the original on 2015-05-27. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  14. ^ a b c d e "Telharmonium". ETHW. 2017-04-12. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  15. ^ a b c d e Stubbs, David (2018). "The World's First Synthesizer Was a 200-Ton Behemoth". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on 21 November 2018. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
  16. ^ A duo at the Washington Telharmonium keyboard, The World's Work, World's Work, June 1906.
  17. ^ "The History of Magnetic Recording in the United States, 1888-1978". Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  18. ^ The Synthesis of Synthesis- The Telharmonium, 19 February 2013, retrieved 2023-02-23
  19. ^ "Electronic Music: A Not-So-Brief History". Carl Kruse | People + Organizations Doing Good. 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  20. ^ Glinsky, Albert Vincent (1992), The Theremin in the Emergence of Electronic Music, Bibcode:1992PhDT.......106G
  21. ^ "Telharmonium". HistoryOfRecording.com. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  22. ^ "Musical recordings lost to history (The Stationary Ark, etc.)". Straight Dope Message Board. 2020-09-28. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  23. ^ "200 tonnes in 1893: The world's first synthesiser". faroutmagazine.co.uk. 2023-11-03. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  24. ^ Weidenaar, Reynold (7 February 2013). "Telharmonium". Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online @ Oxford University Press. Web.
  25. ^ "Music, Sound, And The Personal Computer" (PDF). Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  26. ^ "Streaming in the Victorian Era: Early Synthesizer Sent Out Tunes by Telephone". 99% Invisible. 2022-02-04. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  27. ^ "THE DEAD MEDIA NOTEBOOK" (PDF). Retrieved 2024-04-21.
  28. ^ "Dead medium: Cahill's Telharmonium". Archived from the original on 2013-10-04. Retrieved 2024-04-21.
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