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• Instruments
• Electric & Electronic

The bizarre Telharmonium is widely regarded as the earliest example of a purely electronic instrument. Patented in 1897 by Thaddeus Cahill (1867–1934), a lawyer and inventor from Washington D.C., the Telharmonium pioneered several important technologies. The sound was generated by a series of electromechanical tone wheels (rather like the Hammond organ), each of which produced a pure sine tone ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Modern Era

We think of electronic music as a late twentieth-century phenomenon, but one of the earliest electronic instruments, the telharmonium, dates from as early as 1895. Invented in the US by Thaddeus Cahill (who also interested himself in electric typewriters and pianos), the instrument was an electromechanical keyboard instrument. It used charge-bearing metal brushes and a rotating wheel with ...

• Instruments
• Brass
• Electric & Electronic
• Keyboards
• Percussion
• Stringed
• Woodwind

piano pieces, although it was also used by Stravinsky as a compositional aid, anticipating a similar use of the sequencer by 80 years. Early electronic instruments included the telharmonium, the theremin, the ondes martenot and the trautonium, but of these only the ondes martenot enjoyed much notoriety, thanks mainly to composers such as Olivier Messiaen ...

• Instruments
• Electric & Electronic

The term electric, or electromechanical, organ is used to describe instruments that produce sounds using a dynamo-like system of moving parts – as opposed to electronic organs that employ solid-state electronics. Laurens Hammond In the same way that ‘Hoover’ is used instead of ‘vacuum cleaner’, the very name ‘Hammond’ has become synonymous with electric organs. The Hammond organ was ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

organs whose tone is generated by electronic circuits and radiated by speakers in place of pipes. Their nearest ancestor was the American inventor Thaddeus Cahill’s 200-metric-ton, 60-foot, keyboard-operated telharmonium, which used rotating, electromagnetic tone-wheels to generate the sound. Made in 1904, it soon lapsed, despite its bulk, into predictable obscurity. Its more modest successors ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Modern Era

pitches could be not merely requested of the performers in a score, they could be programmed into the instrument. Styles & Forms | Modern Era | Classical Instruments | Telharmonium | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Electric & Electronic
• Instruments

the electric guitar – are commonly recognizable. Others, such as the Chapman Stick or the Mellotron, are less well known, while some – such as the ill-fated Telharmonium – are nothing short of bizarre! Electric and Electronic The terms ‘electric’ and ‘electronic’ are often interchanged erroneously. By convention, the term ‘electric’ refers to instruments that employ ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Modern Era

, the latter made entirely of light-bulbs. The early twentieth century also saw the development of the first electronic instruments. Before the famous Hammond organ in 1929 came Thaddeus Cahill’s telharmonium in 1906, Lev Theremin’s eponymous theremin in 1920 and the ondes martenot, named after its French inventor Maurice Martenot, in 1928. The latter, with its uninterrupted ...