Telharmonium

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

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

Background

1809, Prussian Samuel Thomas Soemmerring created an electrical telegraph that triggered an array of tuned bells

In 1885, Hermann Helmholtz’s ‘On the Sensations of Tone’ (1862) appeared in English

Elisha Gray’s ‘Musical Telegraph’ of 1874

In Paris, Clément Ader created the ‘Théâtrophone’ in 1881 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.

In 1893 Hungarian Tivadar Puskás created the ‘Telefonhírmondó’ or ‘Telephone Herald’

History

In the 1890s, Thaddeus Cahill was a lawyer living in Washington DC who invented devices for pianos and typewriters. He was working as a Congressional aide when he conceived the idea of the telharmonium, which would broadcast music over telephone wires for "the continuous entertainment of all present".

Although some experimentation with electronically produced sound had been carried out previously, Cahill's insight was not to turn electric signals into sound via an instrument, but to let the signals themselves be the produced sound.