
The Telharmonium Was the Spotify of 1906 - Facemelters
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-telharmonium-was-the-spotify-of-1906
======
Animats
No, it wasn't Spotify, it was Muzak. Muzak went bankrupt in 2009, but for
decades, they provided piped-in music for stores and elevators, distributed
over phone lines.

The Teleharmonium was one of those painful things people built before power
amplifiers. It had a big AC generator for each audio note. That's why the
thing was so huge. They had no way to amplify, so they had to generate each
note with a big enough generator to drive all the speakers in the system. At
any given time, only a few notes were active, but all the generators were
turning. This wasn't a promising line of development.

Tone generation using rotating machinery did make a comeback in Hammond organs
of the late 1930s, which had a tone wheel for each note. This system had
amplifiers, so the tone wheels were small. Hammond organs were noted for being
absolutely in tune; all the wheels were on the same shaft, and driven by a
synchronous motor, so they had to stay in sync. The Hammond was a good organ,
and emulations of the original models are still sold.

There's a whole history of early amplifiers. Edison even built a steam-powered
public address system, the "Steam Shout". This was a diaphragm connected to a
needle valve in a steam line. It was apparently a flop. However, now that we
understand how to build fluidic amplifiers, it might be worth revisiting that
idea. It would be a good accessory for a steam calliope.

Other early attempts at an amp include Edison's "chalk telephone", the
electromotograph. It turns out that you can build a clutch by running a
current between a rotating damp chalk cylinder and a wiper. As the current
changes, so does the friction. This is due to the Johnsen-Rahbek effect, which
is a semiconductor phenomenon and wasn't understood until the 1950s, but was
used before it was understood. Once the theory was figured out, it was clearer
what materials to try. Silicon carbide was much better than wet chalk, and
this effect was used in IBM line printer clutches. Edison used this to make a
"loud-speaking telephone". It would be worth trying that idea with a silicon
carbide disk or drum, and perhaps build a steampunk amp.

Other rotating-machinery amps include Ward-Leonard drives and amplidynes.
These work on the principle that modulating the field current of a generator
affects the output. This only works at frequencies well below the output
frequency of the generator, but there are ways to build high-frequency
generators, such as Alexanderson alternators. Realistically, though, you
probably wouldn't be able to drive anything faster than a subwoofer with
reasonably sized rotating machinery of this type.

There are magnetic amplifiers. These work by saturating the core of a
transformer with a DC signal to stop it from passing AC.[1] These work quite
well as lamp dimmers and motor controllers, but they're mediocre audio
amplifiers. You need a source of AC at some ultrasonic frequency to make this
work for audio.

In 1906, Lee DeForest developed the "Audion", the first three-element vacuum
tube. That was the beginning of electronic amplification, and the beginning of
the end for all those clunky alternatives.

[1] [http://sparkbangbuzz.com/mag-audio-amp/mag-audio-
amp.htm](http://sparkbangbuzz.com/mag-audio-amp/mag-audio-amp.htm)

------
EvanAnderson
If you're interested in some technical background on the Telharmonium you
might like:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV34h-YCMbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV34h-YCMbE)

------
williamcotton
_" One of the year's biggest albums, Adele's 25, was released on November 20,
but not made available on Apple Music, Spotify, or any other streaming app by
the artist's own decision."_

Compare this to Chris Dixon's:

 _" The internet renders business models focused on scarcity and litigation
obsolete."_

[https://medium.com/@cdixon/lessons-from-the-pc-video-game-
in...](https://medium.com/@cdixon/lessons-from-the-pc-video-game-
industry-3350bb7713de#.gm49btx7j)

~~~
scott_karana
That doesn't seem like an exactly fair comparison.

I interpreted it as her cutting out some of the middlemen, just like League of
Legends is doing by not hosting on Steam and thus letting Valve get a 30% cut.

Her album is _reseller_ scarce, but _buyer_ infinite.

------
bbgm
Make Noise released a Eurorack module[1] this year that was inspired by the
Telharmonium. If the Harmonic oscillator is anything like the Telharmonium,
the timbres would have been super interesting.

1\.
[http://www.makenoisemusic.com/telharmonic.html](http://www.makenoisemusic.com/telharmonic.html)

------
mazelife
It's a shame no recordings of this instrument are known to exist [1]. Given
the mechanism was quite similar, it seems likely it would have sounded like a
Hammond Organ.

[1]
[http://www.historyofrecording.com/Telharmonium.html](http://www.historyofrecording.com/Telharmonium.html)

~~~
earlz
Technically since all the info is known about it, you could build a
replica.... but all those AC generators even today would be bulky and power
hungry

