What was the first electrical instrument?
When it comes to new innovations in music, we really have come a long way in a very short space of time. It’s staggering to think that only 150 years ago, the only ways in which songs would have been heard would have been in person or through the distribution of sheet music and that it took the mind of Thomas Edison to invent the phonograph in 1877 for sound to be able to be etched onto the material and played back.
Musical instruments have also developed at a rapid rate since the 20th century, and there are a number of people who are still celebrated today for their creations and whose names have become synonymous with particular instruments. Guitarist Les Paul is credited with having designed the first solid-body electric guitar, and his name is still used as a model manufactured by Gibson today. Robert Moog also designed the first synthesiser that was made available commercially, and his achievement is recognised to the point where Moog is almost used as a hypernym for other synthesisers that don’t bear the name. Even Georges Jenny and his early Ondioline keyboard instrument get respect, albeit in the form of a Stereolab song.
But who can we credit with having created the very first electronic instrument used to make music? You’d be forgiven if the name Thaddeus Cahill doesn’t ring any bells, but his work on designing the Telharmonium probably ought to be much more celebrated, as without his idea, many future innovations in musical technology may not have left the ground.
A former student of the physics of music at Oberlin College, he initially sought to devise an instrument that would be possible to play over phone lines, which at the time were also still a relatively recent patent. Using a combination of mechanical components and repurposing kinetic energy into electricity, the Telharmonium was able to create synthesised sound through layers of sine waves that played at different frequencies. Thus, the very first synthesiser (a word that Cahill also coined) was born.
The patent for the instrument came in 1897, but it would not receive its first public demonstration until after the turn of the century in 1906. However, it was far from being practical to use and was a rather unwieldy mass of metal compared to the compact synths you might imagine in use today. One of its initial incarnations was said to have weighed 200 tonnes and required 30 train carriages to transport it to New York for its assembly. It also wasn’t exactly subtle in its sound, with the sheer amount of noise generated by the generators being deafening before a single note was played.
Explaining how it could be played from the purpose-built Telharmonic Hall concert space on the floor above the instrument, Justin Patrick Moore said in his book, The Radio Phonics Library, that it was possible to play the instrument through ‘just intonation’ – a tuning system that meant keyboard instruments could be played in various scales or keys. Moore went on to say that “though there was no channel separation, the Telharmonic Hall was fitted with eight telephone receivers augmented with paper horns to amplify the sound, which were arrayed behind ferns, columns, and furniture.”
In an age where amplifiers weren’t invented and recording equipment was still in its infancy and unreliable, it’s remarkable that such an innovation existed so early in the 20th century, and its existence inspired many others to create their own more ergonomic versions that bear closer resemblance to instruments used today. Cahill’s invention is still a landmark in musical technology. Just don’t expect to hear his instrument on any recordings now, let alone being played at a gig.
