The talking machine world (Jan-Dec 1906)

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34 THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD. ELECTRIC MUSIC GENERATING SYSTEM. The First Station at Broadway and 39th Street, ment for Producing Music That Is Pureiy E phone to Residences, Hotels, Public Halls, chestras Are Now Employed — Dr. Cahill's L New York, Now Being Installed With an Equiplectrical — Will be Distributed Like the TeleParks, Piers, in Fact, Wherever Bands or Orabor of Years at Last Approaching Fruition. There is now being installed in the Audubon Building, Broadway and 39th street. New York the first large station for the practical demonstration of the Telharmonic system controlled by the Cahill Telharmonic Co., of Washington, system that supplies music of all kinds at any hour after 9 a. m." As previously stated in The World, in connection with a descriptive article, the Telharmonic was invented by Thaddeus Cahill about these dynamos. They sit at an ordinary keyboard and run their fingers over the keys just as if they were playing an organ, only there are no strings, no pipes, no stops, or any of the ordinary apparatus, but only wires which are attached to the keys and connect them with the dynamos. The business will be managed on a system similar to that of a telephone company. Patrons will be asked to enter into contracts for a year or a part of a year. Hotels, restaurants, theaters and other public places will be first supplied. The terms have not yet been fixed, but there will D. C, with a plant at Holyoke, Mass. In a talk with The World a member of the company said: "The Telharmonic with the opening of the New York station early this month, will enter the commercial field as a proven proposition, and the size of the station illustrates our faith in the success of the venture. The machine now being installed weighs 200 tons, and makes use of 150 GROUP OF ISDrCTOI! ALTERNATORS^ THE SOUKCE OF POWER separate dynamos. Some idea of its size may be gained from a statement of the dimensions, which are: Length, 70 feet; width, 10 feet, and height, 5 feet. A turn of a switch, similar to one used in electric lighting, and you have band music in your home or in a hall, the volume of which can be regulated for a small room or an audience of several thousand. It can be made to afford entertainment for theaters, hotels, saloons, hospitals, barber shops, schools, offices of professional men, department stores and residences. In New York alone there are 12.5 theaters, over 500 hotels and 625,000 residences that may be supplied from the station in the Audubon. We intend eventually to adopt the system for use in the open air, and then secure contracts for furnishing music in the parks and on the piers. When we are in working order New Yorkers will be quick to realize the value of a ELECTRICAL MUSIC TRAXSMIITEB IX OPERATION. ten years ago in Washington. He took the model to Oscar F. Crosby, of Washington, who, with F. C. Todd, of Baltimore, furnished him the means to perfect it. They organized a company and built a factory at Holyoke, Mass., where the first great instrument, now being installed here in New York, was made. It is not a musical instrument or anything like what we understand by that term. There is a keyboard, at which the performer sits, with keys like those of a piano, but it is not a piano or an organ or an orchestra or a brass band, tait a clever combination of 150 dynamos controlled through a switchboard in such a way that they will produce vibrations, and, when thrown upon a telephonic surface, these vibrations will produce sounds loud enough to fill the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The switchboard is on the same principle as that in a telephone exchange, but instead of removing or inserting a plug to make the connection the operator touches a key similar to the key of a piano. It is the business of the performer to throw the currents of electricity off and on the wire just as a telegraph operator does when he is sending a message; only he has 150 keys, while a telegraph operator has but one, and he touches two or three or six of them at the same time in order to produce harmony. Each of the 150 dynamos is '"tuned," as you may say, to a certain tone — that is, it produces a certain vibration, and that vibration represents a certain tone in the musical scale. When several of the dynamos are in operation at the same time they produce a combination of vibrations and consequently a combination of tones like striking a chord upon a piano. Three or four professional pianists have been practicing for several months to operate be a monthly rate just like that charged for a telephone or an electric light. When a patron signs a contract and pays his rate the wires will be run into his house just like telephone wires. The company is just beginning to string the wires in the subways and on the poles of the Bell Telephone Co., with which it has a working arrangement. The Telharmonic Co. is not controlled by the Bell Co., however. The apparatus is similar to that of the old-fashioned telephone — a box about three feet by ten inches in size. The company will put. in one, or several, as a patron may desire. New York offers the most TOXE-MISING TRANSFORMER. promising field for the first station, as its people are the most music loving in the country, spending over $37,000,000 for music yearly. Many of the larger hotels spend from ?25,000 to $50,000 on music alone. The primary idea of conveying music by means of wires is very old, it being successfully accomplished as far back as 1877 between Philadelphia