page_title: Marxophone
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Marxophone / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A w:Marxophone on display in the Dickenson County Historical Museum in w:Escanaba, Michigan.
context_page_description: The Marxophone is a fretless zither played via a system of metal hammers. It features two octaves of double melody strings in the key of C major, and four sets of chord strings. Sounding somewhat like a mandolin, the Marxophone's timbre is also reminiscent of various types of hammered dulcimers.
  The player typically strums the chords with the left hand. The right hand plays the melody strings by depressing spring steel strips that hold small lead hammers over the strings. A brief stab on a metal strip bounces the hammer off a string pair to produce a single note. Holding the strip down makes the hammer bounce on the double strings, which produces a mandolin-like tremolo. The bounce rate is somewhat fixed, as it is based on the spring steel strip length, hammer weight, and string tension—but a player can increase the rate slightly by pressing higher on the strip, effectively moving its pivot point closer to the lead hammer.
  Numerically coded sheet music prepared specifically for the Marxophone indicates when and in what order to play melody and chord strings. This type of music, similar to tablature, was produced for those who could not read standard notation.
context_section_description: A common misconception is that the Marxophone was manufactured by the Marxochime Colony of New Troy, Michigan, but it was not. While the design of its hammer mechanism was patented by Henry Charles Marx (1875–1947), (pat. #1044553 issued on November 19, 1912) the Marxophone was never manufactured by the Marxochime Colony. Instead, during their tenure from 1927 to 1972, the "colony" designed and manufactured a wide assortment of "bowed" zithers, the melody strings actuated with a bow not hammers. The 1912 patent was assigned to the Phonoharp Company, which Marx was affiliated with at the time. Phonoharp manufactured Marxophones as well as Celestaphones (having a different body contour) until its merger with Oscar Schmidt Inc. in 1926. The newly formed company known as the International Musical Corporation produced Marxophones between 1926 and 1931. Then, following the International Musical Corporation's dissolution on December 30, 1931, two successor companies, the Oscar Schmidt-International Corporation (1931-1936) and Oscar Schmidt-International, Inc., (late 1936 till the present ), manufactured Marxophones until the 1950s.
  Marx was one of a number of late 19th century and early 20th century musical gadget manufacturers that combined two or more instruments into one. Other inventions included the Banjolin, the Hawaiiphone, the Mandolin-Uke, the Marxolin, the Pianoette, the Pianolin, and the Tremoloa. Marxophones were billed as easy to play, and sold on time-purchase plans by door-to-door salesmen, and through mail-order companies like Sears-Roebuck.
caption: Marxophone
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