Silex Piano
musical instrument of the Lithophone family
The Silex Piano is a musical instrument of the Lithophone family. It was created by Honoré Baudre, circa 1885 and was described in several contemporary publications.
Cassell's Magazine
According to Cassell's Family Magazine Illustrated, 1885:
It has long been known that certain flintstones emit a musical note when struck with other flints; and M. Baudre, a French musician, has constructed a piano on this principle. The flints are chosen according to their pitch when struck, and suspended horizontally by their two ends in a row like the keys of a Piano. An elegant metal framework supports the stones, and wires are used to suspend them. A sounding-board is placed a fraction of an inch below the row of stones. Tunes are played by means of two smaller flints held in the hands. The stone which emits the greatest tone weighs 41⁄2 lbs.; that which gives the corresponding half-tone weighs 9lbs. This large flint is immediately followed by one weighing 1oz. A 3oz.
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This entry incorporates text from “Silex Piano” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.