Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-05-24
ART OF TELHARMoNY LATEST
ACHIEVEMENT OF ELECTRICITY.
Performer Plays on Bank of Alterva-
tors and Sweet Sounds
Travel by Wire.


only one or two can now be accumulated.
| Electricity has been the greatest centraliz-
| ing, unifying force these hundred years,
| and the ''tie that binds is distinctively
made Of wire. The art of telharmony
| pushes one degree further the dominant
| principle of current-production embodied in
| the telegraph office, the telephone exchange,
! the electric light plant and the trolley
| power house and it emphasizes just little
| bit more the practice of drawing out from
| the circuit at the point Of consumption, just
| what is needed for intelligence, conmuni-
cation, illumination, heat. traction and what
| not. For such service the American people
spent last year 81 000, 000, 600, and now 1t
| is going TO add its music bill to that mod
| est sum. because there will be economy and
| gain in II.
| Electric Waves of Musical Sound.
That the sounds of music can be trans
| mitted over a line wire Is nothing novel.
| In rudimentary way the systems of har-
| monic teiegraphy based on tuned needs
| point the way; and the very earliest work
| in telephony in Europe and America dealt
! rather with music than with speech. Many
/ of us have laid our ear-flaps over q tele-
| phone receiver and listened to music trans
| mitted from distant opera house or con-
| cert hall or church; and some of us nave
| seen a rollckng monograph cylinder In
| New York sing coon songs and "A Lie
| on the Ocean Wave with the purpose of
dispelling the dull gloom in distant Philadel-
| phia. All of this was excellently We'll. but
| in each instance the music received ana de-
| uVered came. triturated and enaScuiated
| by the trip, from an instrument In the
| Cahill telharmonium we have changed all
| that, and enter a pure democracy or
| musical electrical waves, from among
| which, at will, those that please us pest
| can be selected, to give us any tune or
| tone or tinlbre that want.
This all reads wildly eXtravagant, but
| 1t is the cold statement of a bald fact. The
new system of telharmony has need neither
| of sounding brass nor of tWangfng string.
| Whether piano, violin, pipe organ or flute.
all are alike and Indifferent to II, because
along the lines that Helmholtz laid down.
and that the foremost electrical invention
of our time has been following, DIR, Thad-
deus Cahill has devised a mechanism which
throws to the circuits, manipulated by
the performer at the central keyboard, the
electrical current waves that, received by
the telephone, diaphragm at any one of
10000 subscribers stations. produce musical
sounds of unprecedented clearness. sweet
ness and purity. In the future Paderewskis
will not earn their living by occasional APP
pearances in isolated halls, but as central
station operators. probably in obscurity and
seclusion but charming a whole cityful at
the same instant Edison once said to
the writer that the world was coming to
time when everything would be done auto
matically by electricity, and when Eight
hours would seem the depth of slavery.
Then the world would be run from one key
board but while all others loafed and In
yited their souls he wanted to be the man
at the switch. In this wise, when List
or Rubinstein is at the telharmonlum,
what will become of the second-rates?
Playing Upon the Current.
The Cahill telharmonium may be COM
| pared with pipe organ. The performer at
its keyboard, instead of playing upon air
in the pipes, plays upon the electric current
ba+ 10 haip cd IN largo number
of small dynamo-electric machines of the
alternating type. These little
'inductor' alternators are of quite simple
construction, from the mechanical stand
point, though 1t is needless to say that the
inventor did not find out at once all he
wanted to know about them. That took q
good ten years In each alternator the
current serges to and fro at different
frequency or rate of speed-thousands ana
thousands of times q minute; and this cur
rent as It reaches the telephone at the near
or the distant station causes the diaphragm
OF that instrument to emit a musical note
characteristic of that current whenever 1t
| Is generated at Just that frequency or
| rate of vibration in the circuit. The rest is
| relatively easy. The revolving parts Of the
| little alternators are mounted upon shafts,
| which are geared together. Each revolving
| part, or rotor having its own number or
| poles, or teeth. in the magnetic field of
| force and each having Its own angular
! velocity, the arrangement gives us the abli-
ity to produce, in the initial condition of
musical electrical waves, the notes through
a compass OF five octaves.
When an organ is played, boy or now
quite often an electric motor, pumps the
bellows. When the telharmonium is played,
q motor similarly sets 1t going, so that all
the little interlocked rotors are revolved at
once and orrer their plastic currents to the
facile touch of the performer to whose key
board the wires from the aIternators lead.
This keyboard is shown in one of the en-
cravings and has two banks of KEYS to
accommodate the notes thus made avail
able. If one key is depressed, the circuit
is closed a ground tone and one or more
allied circuits that VIII give the harmonics
corresponding to that tone. But the cur
rents, before they go to the exterior circuit
containing the subscribers telephone, are
not left IN their primitive simple form. On
the contrary, they are passed, they
might be in ordinary lighting and power
service through transformers, where they
are blended; and In these tone mixers
the simple sinusoidal wave of the alter
nator current becomes too complex to know
itself In this manner highly composite vi
brations are built up which fall upon the
ear as musical chords of great beauty and
purity OF tone. This process of interweav-
ing of currents can be pushed very far and
| the complex vibrations from different key
boards can be combined into others even
more subtly superposed and welded, so as
to produce In the telephone receiver the
effect of several voices or instruments
Within the range of such an equipment ap-
pear possible some sounds never before
heard on land sea.
The performer at this keyboard has a re-
ceiver close at his side. SO that he can tell
exactly how he is playing to his unseen
audience: and 1t Is extraordinary to note
| how easily and perfectly the electric cur
rents are manipulated so that with their
own instantaneity they respond to every
wave OF personal emotion and every 4nuance
of touch. 1t is, indeed this immediateness
of control and the singular purity OF tone
that appeal to the watchful listened. A
MUSICIAN will readily understand how the
| tfinbre is also secured from such resources
| for with current combinations yielding the
| needed harmonics. string, brass, and wood
| effects, etc, can be obtained simply by mix
| ing the harmonics--that is the currents
| In tile required proportions
The Equipment Described.
| The first plant In the world of this kind
is al Holyoke. Mass In the laboratory of
| Dr. Cahil, and, the second Is being built
| for regular work over telephone circuits in