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Telharmonium

April 27, 2024

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 edit

  • 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 edit

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 edit

 
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 edit

"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 edit

Further reading edit

  • 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
  • https://magneticmusic.ws/mmTelHallProg1.pdf

References edit

  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. . 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. ^ . web.archive.org. 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. ^ "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. ^ . web.archive.org. 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. 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, 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. ^ . Retrieved 2024-04-21.

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Telharmonium.

April 27, 2024
telharmonium, also, known, dynamophone, early, electrical, organ, developed, thaddeus, cahill, 1896, patented, 1897, electrical, signal, from, transmitted, over, wires, heard, receiving, means, horn, speakers, console, thaddeus, cahill, 1897, like, later, hamm. 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 Contents 1 Background 2 History 3 Design 4 Legacy 5 See also 6 Further reading 7 References 8 External linksBackground edit1809 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 Clement Ader created the Theatrophone 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 amp T ceased work on a service to provide music admitting difficulty with sound quality 7 8 9 10 11 In 1893 Hungarian Tivadar Puskas created the Telefonhirmondo or Telephone Herald 6 History editIn 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 nbsp 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 edit nbsp 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 edit 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 Varese and Luigi Russolo 26 27 28 See also editTrautoniumFurther reading editShepard 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 https magneticmusic ws mmTelHallProg1 pdfReferences edit Chapter 6 Digital Sound amp Music Retrieved 2024 04 21 US patent 580035 Thaddeus Cahill Art of and apparatus for generating and distributing music electrically issued 1897 04 06 filed 1896 02 04 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 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 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 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 The Telharmonium web archive org 2021 01 21 Retrieved 2024 04 21 Thaddeus Cahill s Music Plant The Telharmonium and the promise of electrical music on tap Retrieved 2024 04 21 Thaddeus Cahill s Teleharmonium Retrieved 2024 04 21 THE TELHARMONIUM ELECTRICITY S ALLIANCE WITH MUSIC Retrieved 2024 04 21 News and Entertainment by Telephone 1876 1930 Retrieved 2024 04 21 Synthmuseum com Magazine www synthmuseum com Retrieved 2024 04 21 F Y I NYTimes com web archive org 2015 05 27 Retrieved 2024 04 21 a b c d e Telharmonium ETHW 2017 04 12 Retrieved 2024 04 21 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 A duo at the Washington Telharmonium keyboard The World s Work World s Work June 1906 The History of Magnetic Recording in the United States 1888 1978 Retrieved 2024 04 21 The Synthesis of Synthesis The Telharmonium retrieved 2023 02 23 Electronic Music A Not So Brief History Carl Kruse People Organizations Doing Good 2021 12 26 Retrieved 2024 04 21 Glinsky Albert Vincent 1992 The Theremin in the Emergence of Electronic Music Bibcode 1992PhDT 106G Telharmonium HistoryOfRecording com Retrieved 2024 04 21 Musical recordings lost to history The Stationary Ark etc Straight Dope Message Board 2020 09 28 Retrieved 2024 04 21 200 tonnes in 1893 The world s first synthesiser faroutmagazine co uk 2023 11 03 Retrieved 2024 04 21 Weidenaar Reynold 7 February 2013 Telharmonium Grove Music Online Oxford Music Online Oxford University Press Web Music Sound And The Personal Computer PDF Retrieved 2024 04 21 Streaming in the Victorian Era Early Synthesizer Sent Out Tunes by Telephone 99 Invisible 2022 02 04 Retrieved 2024 04 21 THE DEAD MEDIA NOTEBOOK PDF Retrieved 2024 04 21 Dead medium Cahill s Telharmonium Retrieved 2024 04 21 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Telharmonium https www britannica com art telharmonium Official U S Patent https magneticmusic ws mmvideo htm https www youtube com watch v AV34h YCMbE https www youtube com watch v kf6OQvhChKg https daelectronicmusic wordpress com history telharmonium Douglas Anderson School of the Arts https www popularmechanics com technology gadgets a17086 first synth muzak telharmonium https web archive org web 20121114225402 https blogs courant com bill weir 2010 04 mark twain electronic music pi html https www perfectcircuit com signal telharmonium history Telharmonium Audion Piano Luigi Russolo et les bruitistes sonhors free fr French https www makenoisemusic com content manuals telharmonicManual pdf Telharmonic an Eurorack synthesizer module Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Telharmonium amp oldid 1220064960, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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