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The ‘Saraga-Generator’ Wolja Saraga, Germany,1931
The Saraga Generator. Photo; Saraga family archives The ‘Saraga-Generator’ was developed by the electrical engineer and physicist Wolja Saraga at the Heinrich-Hertz Institut Für Schwingungsforschung...
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The ‘Rhythmicon’ Henry Cowell & Leon Termen. USA, 1930
Henry Cowell and the Rhythmicon In 1916 the American Avant-Garde composer Henry Cowell was working with ideas of controlling cross rhythms and tonal sequences with a keyboard, he wrote several quartet...
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The ‘Cellule Photo Electrique’ or ‘Cellulophone’. Pierre Toulon & Krugg Bass,...
Pierre Toulon’s Patent for the Cellulophone Invented by the French engineer Pierre Toulon aided by the electronic engineer Krugg Bass, the Cellulophone (“Cellule Photo-électrique”) made it’s debut as a...
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The ‘Superpiano’ and ‘Symphonium’. Emerich Spielmann, Austria, 1928
Emerich Spielmann playing the Superpiano and a standard piano Spielmann’s Superpiano, patented in 1927, was based on the photo-optical principle used in a number of instruments during the 1920s and 30s...
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‘Graphical Soundtrack’ Arseney Avraamov, Russia, 1930
Arseny Avraamov in Moscow 1923. (Russian: Арсений Михайлович Авраамов), (born Krasnokutsky [Краснокутский], 1886 died Moscow, 1944)Arseny Mikhailovich Avraamov was an avant-garde Russian composer and...
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the ‘Nivotone’ Alexei Voinov. Russia, 1931
The Nivotone optical reader The animator Nikolai Voinov (1900-1958), part of Arseney Avraamov‘s group ‘Multzvik’ in Moscow, 1931, started his own method of optical synthesis. Instead of drawing or...
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The ‘Vibroexponator’ Boris Yankovsky, Russia 1932
Boris Yankovsky in 1939 Boris Yankovsky (1904-1973) worked with the Multzvuk group as a pupil of Arseney Araamov at Mosfilm, Moscow from 1931-32. However he grew disenchanted with what he considered to...
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The ‘Hardy-Goldthwaite Organ’ Arthur Cobb Hardy, Sherwood F. Brown & duVal...
Hardy Goldthwaite Organ The Hardy-Goldthwaite organ was a type of early analogue sampler, similar to the Welte Licht-Ton Orgel, The Superpiano and several other photo-electrical instruments of the...
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‘Pattern Playback’ Franklin S. Cooper. USA, 1949
Franklin Cooper with the Pattern Playback machine The Pattern Playback was not a musical instrument as such but an early hardware device designed to synthesise and analyse speech, designed and built...
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The ‘Luminaphone’, Harry Grindell Matthews & Bernard.J.Lynes. UK, 1925
The Luminaphone (image: Illustrierte Technik für Jedermann: Heft 18 1926) The Luminaphone of 1926 was one of a long line of inventions by the British inventor Harry Grindell Matthews, well known at...
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