A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DWilliam Du Bois Duddell : 1869 - 1942
The method of generating continuous electric waves by means of a arc lamp was invented by the Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen in 1902 as a modification of William Du Bois Duddell's 'singing arc' of 1900. Duddell, a British physicist discovered accidently in 1899 that a carbon arc lamp could be made to oscillate at audible frequencies. By attaching a keyboard to the arc lamps he created one of the first electronic instruments and the first electronic instrument that was audible without using the telephone system as an amplifier/speaker. Duddell toured the country with his invention which unfortunately never became more than a novelty. It was later recognised that if an antenna was attached to the singing arc and made to 'sing' at radio frequencies rather than audio it could be used a continuous radio wave transmitter.
1899: The 'Singing Arc', Invented by William Du Bois Duddell in London, intended to provide both light and music by means of a tunable arc of electricity.
By the year 1900, in London, streetlights were electric. But, the device used was not the bulb invented by Edison because Edison's bulb was recent and did not produce enough light for a street. The device used in streetlights generated its light as an electric arc (a continuous electric spark). The problem of this device was the annoying whining sound that emanated from arcs. The physicist William Duddell was trying to devise a way to eliminate this sound and found... a way to control its frequency! Duddell attached a keyboard to his first voltage-controlled device and took the instrument on tour. The 'Singing Arc' became a novelty by the turn of the century.
Electricity was used in the design of musical instruments as early as 1761, when J. B. Delaborde of Paris invented an electric harpsichord. Experimental instruments incorporating solenoids, motors, and other electromechanical elements continued to be invented throughout the 19th century. One of the earliest instruments to generate musical tones by purely electric means was William Duddell's 'singing arc', in which the rate of pulsation of an exposed electric arc was determined by a resonant circuit consisting of an inductor and a capacitor. Demonstrated in London in 1899, Duddell's instrument was controlled by a keyboard, which enabled the player to change the arc's rate of pulsation, thereby producing distinct musical notes. The largest, and perhaps most advanced, of early electric instruments was Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium. Completed in 1906, this instrument employed large rotary generators to produce alternating electric waveforms, telephone receivers equipped with horns to convert the electric waveforms into sound, and a network of wires to distribute "Telharmonic Music" to subscribers in New York City. Complex and impractical, the Telharmonium nevertheless anticipated electronic organs, synthesizers, and background music technology.
The first major effort to generate musical sounds electrically was carried out over many years by an American, Thaddeus Cahill, who built a formidable assembly of rotary generators and telephone receivers to convert electrical signals into sound. Cahill called his remarkable invention the telharmonium, which he started to build about 1895 and continued to improve for years thereafter. The instrument failed because it was complex, impractical, and could not produce sounds of any magnitude since amplifiers and loudspeakers had not yet been invented. Nevertheless, Cahill's concepts were basically sound. He was a visionary who lived ahead of his time, and his instrument was the ancestor of present-day electronic music synthesizers.
Associated Essays The Poulsen Arc Transmitter - by Hans Buhl The Wire Recorder: A Brief History - by David Morton
Associated Text M. Clark and Henry Nielsen, Crossed Wires and Missing Connections: Valdemar Poulsen, The American Telegraphone Company, and the Failure to Commercialize Magnetic Recording Business History Review 69 (1995) pp. 1-41.
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