Inside The Music-Box of Giant Bells

IN the bell loft of the Rockefeller church in New York it suspended the first of the tuned carrillons, the smallest bells of which are shown above. The resonance of a bell, which lasts for several moments, has previously prevented accurate tuning of carrillons, but this age-old annoyance has been eliminated by a system of bell dampers invented by G. M. Giannini.

Right—Where the ancient carrillon players pulled an assortment of ropes, the modern musician sits down to his instrument like an organist. Electricity and compressed air swing the weighty clappers. Left—The Rockefeller church in New York, where thousands are delighting in the tuneful melody of the bells.

Above—The “Music Box” of the giant carrillon. Each peg represents a note in the melody, struck electrically when the giant drum revolves automatically. Left—This damper suppresses the tone of the bell the instant it is no longer contributing to the melody. The damper is the secret of carrillon tuning, and was discovered by Giannini, a young electrical engineer. Each note can thus be heard distinctly, not submerged in a dissonant chorus.

Violin Made Of New “Glass”
ANEW type of unbreakable, flexible material which has the same transparency as ordinary glass, but weighs less, size for size, has been invented in Germany. A product of artificial resins, the new material can be bent, twisted, punched, cut with a scissors, polished and sawed. As a demonstration of the possibilities of the new “glass,” the full-size violin shown above was made entirely from sample sheets, with the exception of the usual strings.

DOG SHOWS MUSICAL TALENT
EVERY now and then a dog is seen on the stage that seems to almost have human intelligence. This dog shows exceptional musical ability when he sits on the bench of an automatic piano and pats the keys, as the piano plays. That he has a musical sense of rhythm is shown by the fact that he pats the keys in time with the piece that is being, played. He is owned by a Berlin vaudeville performer.

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the music goes ’round and ’round

People who like phonograph music are getting dizzy trying to keep up with three different systems of playing three sizes of disks.

By Robert Hertzberg

BUYING phonograph records used to be a simple and painless operation. You could walk into any music shop and say, “I want a few of the latest dance tunes for a party.” You’d depart in a few minutes with a neat bundle under your arm. But not any more!

“Phonograph records? Yes, sir,” the clerk now says. “Would you like 10- or 12-inch records for a 78-r.p.m. turntable, or 7-, 10-, or 12-inch records for a 33-1/3 r.p.m. machine, or 7-inch records for a 45-r.p.m. player? The prices range from 60 cents to $4.85.”

If this jumble of figures doesn’t make you dizzy, a demonstration of the three different turntable types certainly will. And after you have seen and handled the six different records, in colors ranging from bright red to somber black, you may decide to cancel the party and go to the movies instead.

The slightly delirious record industry is a big business. Last year, about 15 million owners of phonographs bought approximately 250 million records. RCA-Victor and Columbia Records, the two biggest producers in the industry, are engaged in an undeclared but active “trade war” with this juicy market as the prize.

For as far back as most of us can remember, the standard phonograph turntable speed has been 78 r.p.m. A player of any make would take records having a diameter of 10 or 12 inches. These sizes have maximum playing times of 2-1/2 and 5 minutes per side, which are adequate for popular selections and dance music but, of course, much too limited for long classical works. To eliminate the bother of changing disks manually when a symphony was being played, manufacturers brought out automatic record changers. Some of these machines must have been designed by disciples of Rube Goldberg. They are weird contraptions with flailing arms and complex gear trains, they have a tendency to wreck the records, and they’re out of order about half the time.

Last year, Columbia Records, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Columbia Broadcasting System (keep that little fact in mind), made a big splash with the first really important improvement in phonograph records in almost half a century: a new 12-inch record that turns at only 33-1/3 r.p.m. and plays for a maximum of about 22-1/2 minutes. Coincidentally, it brought out a 10-incher that runs for 13% minutes and a 7-inch baby that last 5 minutes. The smallest one is thus equivalent to the old 12-inch, 78-r.p.m. disk.

“What about those 45-minute records I read so much about?” you ask. The 12-inch, 33 -1/3 -r.p.m. disk is the 45-minute record, played on both sides. That expression “45-minute record” was used a bit loosely in the initial advertising and publicity. You had to read down into the fine print to learn that the figure represented two sides, not one. At that, more than a third of an hour of uninterrupted music is a lot of music, and Columbia’s LP (for long-playing) Microgroove records were a quick success.

The word Microgroove explains the secret of the new disks. As you probably know in a general way, a phonograph transcription consists of a wiggly spiral cut into the face of a flat plastic disk. A sensitive needle, attached to a tone arm, follows the grooves and translates the undulations into impulses, which are increased in volume and reproduced by the amplifier section of a radio or by a separate phono amplifier. In 78-r.p.m. records, the grooves run between 85 and 100 to the inch, the needle point is about three thousandths of an inch thick, and the pressure of the pick-up against the record is between one and three ounces. In the LP records, the grooves hit between 225 and 300 to the inch, the needle tip is one thousandth, and the pick-up pressure is about a fifth of an ounce.

The tone quality of the LP disks is generally regarded as superior to that of the older records. A notable feature is absence of scratch noise, a result of the very light needle tracking.

Right off the bat. you can see that the new records won’t work on an old machine. Columbia was all prepared for this. When the records were announced, Philco had a new player and a tone arm to go with them. Fortunately, no revisions had to be made in the amplifier circuits. Any owner of a high-grade phono-radio combination could tie in a 33-1/3 r.p.m. turntable in a matter of minutes.

And it was a simple matter for manufacturers to rush out two-speed equipment fitted with dual tone arms or single arms containing separate pick-ups that could be switched in and out at will. This was a wise move, because there are millions . . . probably billions . . . of perfectly good 78-r.p.m. disks carefully preserved in albums, and their owners have no intention of throwing them away just for the sake of new records that play longer. Existing automatic changers could readily be adapted in manufacture to the two-speed turntables because the physical dimensions of the 12-inch LP records are identical with those of the 12-inch 78-r.p.m. disks. Only four LP records, changed and flopped automatically, can thus provide three solid hours of music—providing the changer doesn’t decide to chuck them across the room into the fireplace.

Just when the two-speed turntable and the LP records began gaining momentum, RCA-Victor threw a small atomic bomb into the happy picture in the form of a new 7-inch record that turns at 45 r.p.m. and has a 1-1/2 inch center hole instead of the 1/4-inch opening found in all other records. Its grooves run between 250 and 275 per inch and the needle size and pressure are the same as for the LP disks. The playing time per side is 5-1/3 minutes.

People in and out of the radio industry rushed to criticize RCA-Victor for bringing out another “nonstandard” record. A point not generally appreciated, but deserving a lot of attention, is that with the record itself the company introduced a new automatic player of highly ingenious but simple construction. The entire changing mechanism is enclosed in the stubby center post or spindle, with no outside arms, levers, carrying pans, or anything else. The spindle takes a stack of ten records, giving a total of more than 50 minutes of playing time. The records drop into position quickly and quietly. Anyone accustomed to the erratic and sometimes spectacular behavior of ordinary automatic changers will be intrigued by the effortless functioning of this new device. Its simplicity makes it especially valuable for children’s use, for dance parties, etc.

The 45-r.p.m. records themselves have a construction feature not found in any others. The label area, immediately around the spindle hole, is thicker than the playing surfaces; so the latter cannot rub against either each other or the top of the turntable. This undoubtedly makes the disks last longer and give better music during their life. Most ordinary records have to be discarded long before their grooves actually wear out because they get so scratched up.

The advent of the RCA records caused the New York newspapers a few months ago to give front-page prominence to reports of a “record war” between that company and Columbia. This surprised no one because the Columbia Broadcasting System, which owns Columbia Records, has been feuding with the National Broadcasting Company, which is owned by RCA. The head of Columbia records issued a long and somewhat angry statement denouncing RCA; RCA officials said nothing and went right ahead with a million-dollar campaign to put their new system over.

Turntable manufacturers lost no time in. revamping their products to accommodate the 45-r.p.m. disks. By the time this issue of Mechanix Illustrated appears, there will be on the market dozens of three-speed players, with double tone arms, that will handle any records now sold. If you want to play some of your old favorites, you shift the speed lever to 78, push in a 1/4-inch spindle, select the three-mil pick-up, and load ‘er up. If you want to go high brow and listen to Brahms or Shostakovich for a couple of hours, shift to 33-1/3, leave the 1/4-inch spindle in position, select the one-mil pick-up, and pretend you’re in Carnegie Hall. If there’s a special new number on a 45-r.p.m. disk, shift to 45 on the turntable, plug in the special 1-1/2-inch adapter spindle, and let it roll.

If you’re perfectly happy with your prewar phono-radio combination and don’t feel inclined to invest money in a new two- or three-speed player, you won’t be missing a thing. Both Columbia and RCA have announced that 78-r.p.m. duplicates will be made of all new recordings.

Columbia and RCA-Victor advance excellent reasons for their choices of record speeds. Mostly, they’re very technical and are tied up with the distortion effects that occur at different speeds in relation to the diameters of the grooves. As far as quality of reproduction is concerned, I doubt if one listener in ten thousand could detect any appreciable difference between the two makes. When you get down to it, the RCA 7-inch 45-r.p.m. record, playing five minutes, is virtually identical with the Columbia 7-inch 33-1/3-r.p.m. “Long-Playing” disk, which also runs five minutes; RCA just doesn’t use the term long playing, because a five-minute record certainly is not a long-playing one. The 13-1/2- and 22-1/2-min-ute Columbia records are something else. For classical music, they undeniably are wonderful. Personally, I am of the opinion that RCA-Victor isn’t much concerned about the high-brow trade and figures that it can do plenty of business with the many more people who go for the popular stuff. Pay your money and take your choice!

The World’s Largest Saxophone
THERE is plenty of music in this horn. Standing six feet, seven inches in height, this saxophone is believed to be the largest in the world. In spite of its height it may be played from a sitting position—provided the musician is sufficiently expert.

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HOW TO MAKE A PHONOGRAPH

By WALTER LEE

IN case any person of a mechanical turn of mind wishes to try his hand at building a talking machine, I will explain what I used and how I used it. But before I do so, it may be well to explain, in a general way, the principle of phonography, so that the experimenter will know just what he is doing and why he is doing it that way.

When a pig squeals, the vibrations of the cords in his throat, or wherever his squeal apparatus is located, cause the surrounding air to vibrate. The vibrations move away from that center, in all directions, like the ripples in a placid pool of water when a pebble is thrown into it. They are called sound waves. They come in contact with the drums of our ears, which, in their turn, begin to vibrate, and this vibration of the ear drums is what we call a noise. We hear the pig squeal, but his squeal was perfect silence until it reached our ear drums. If there were no ears, there would be no sound, but the sound waves would be present, ready to be converted into sounds, just the same.

A recording phonograph is a machine with an ear drum. The ear drum is a glass disc, .or diaphragm, which vibrates as an ear drum, when sound waves come in contact with it. The record makers cause the sound vibrations, by singing, or playing, or talking, in the immediate vicinity of the machine, and the waves then vibrate the diaphragm, which has a sharp needle so attached to it that it will make certain movements in exact correspondence with the diaphragm. The machine is so built, that a plate or plane of wax is revolved with its surface in contact with the needle, and thus, when the diaphragm vibrates, the needle moves, and traces a wavy line in the wax. This wavy line represents the sound waves that vibrated the diaphragm. Now, if the wax is hardened, and the angle of the needle is changed so it will go over the same path again without digging into it, the wavy line will cause the needle to move, and the needle will cause the diaphragm to vibrate, and that will set up a corresponding vibration in the air. The sound waves thus created, reach our ear drums, which in turn vibrate, and we hear the same sounds that were originally thrown into the recording phonograph.

My home-made machine consists of the following articles, which I picked up around the house and basement. One soap box, one movement from a discarded eight day clock, one tin megaphone, two feet of three-quarter-inch gas pipe and three elbows, a piece of a worn out inner tube, a diaphragm of hard rubber from a telephone receiver, an old scarf pin, various pieces of wood, nails, bolts and one pie tin. There were also two iron washers. The tools I used, were a pair of pliers, a pocket knife and a hammer.

The clock movement I removed from its case, then took from it, the dial and hands, its hour and minute wheels. Then I removed its escapement, which is the mechanism which controls its speed. In some clocks, this is simply the pendulum and verge, but in this clock it was the balance wheel and hair spring, pallet fork, and escape wheel. You can tell what these are by going over the wheel train. The first wheel or pinion, is the one on which the mainspring is wound, the second is the center wheel or pinion, on which the minute hand is mounted and from which the hour wheel is geared. The third is an idler. The fourth is the one on which the second hand is mounted, but it is always present, whether there is a second hand on it or not. The fifth is the escape wheel, the sixth is the pallet pinion, and the seventh is the balance wheel, which has a very fine spring on it, and which turns in opposite directions alternately. The balance wheel, the pallet and the escape wheel form the escapement.

The rest of the wheel train could now turn at high speed, from the power of the mainspring. Using two of the wheels I had removed, and two pieces of the hairspring, I made a speed governor and set it so that the train would turn the center pinion at eighty-five revolutions per minute. I attached the governor to the fourth pinion, or the one which was now last in the train.

I now whittled a little block of wood into the shape of a spindle and fastened it rigidly to the center pinion, in the place where the minute hand had been. It should be tight enough so that it will not wobble, and it must run true. In the bottom of a pie tin, to one side of which I had glued a disc of cloth, taken out of an old overcoat, I now punched a hole in the exact center, and fastened it to the spindle with a screw and another piece of wood to act as a continuation of the spindle.

My tin pan now would revolve by the power of the clock spring. I made a friction brake with a lever and a piece of wood, to act against the fourth wheel. Then I mounted the whole in a soap box, so that the spindle with the tin pan on it was on top and on the outside. By means of a hole in the side of the box, I could reach in with my hand and wind the spring, or control the brake.

The next step was to make the reproducer and its conducting line to the horn. Two large iron washers, about two inches in outside diameter, I fastened together, first sandwiching between them two rubber washers of the same size, with the telephone diaphragm between them. The washers were held together with three small bolts and six nuts, not through them, but against the outer edge, like clamps. A long, strong scarf pin with its head and point cut off, I now fastened to the center of the diaphragm with wax, and at the point where the pin passed the edge of the iron washers, I doubled it around on itself, to form a loop. Through the loop I ran a small piece of wire and fastened both ends of it between the washers to act as a support for the pin. On the end of the pin I impaled a small block of wood, which had a small hole in the other end, about the size of a regular phonograph needle. With a very small wood screw, I fastened the needles in the hole.

I then took the shell of an electric light socket, the small end of which was fortunately a good tight fit to the inside of the washer behind the diaphragm, and the other end was an equally tight fit over the outside edge of an elbow for three-quarter-inch pipe. The elbow, L screwed to a ten-inch length of three-quarter-inch pipe, with another elbow at the other end, and a second length of pipe with a third elbow was then put on!

To the third elbow I fastened the tin megaphone.

Then I attached this rig to an upright which I nailed to the soap box, in such a way that it would be free to swing, and balanced a little to the left, so its tendency would be to swing that way. The adjustment of this somewhat delicate balance was the hardest part of the entire job. .

My phonograph was now complete and I set a record on it. To my surprise, it really played! Not exquisitely, perhaps—let us rather say with surprising ability and persistence.

Had I been obliged to purchase the material out of which this home-made and homely machine is made, it would have cost me from one dollar to two dollars, the greatest expense being for the clock works. I have an idea, however, that the resources of nearly any attic or basement storeroom contain all the requisite materials.

Tones of New Stringless Cello Generated by Electricity

AN ELECTRIC cello without strings capable of producing tremendous volume and exquisite tone has been invented by Leon Theremin, who is shown in the photo on the left demonstrating how his new instrument is played.

Tones are varied by running the fingers of the left hand up and down the heavy black line which replaces the strings, while the right hand works the pump to control the volume.

An external oscillator, amplifier and loud speaker are used with this cello and the tones are generated by the oscillating tubes in the instrument. As the fingers are run up and down the black line, under which a coil is concealed, the player varies the capacity of the circuit which alters the frequency, or pitch, of the oscillating tubes.

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King of Cymbals

An ancient Turkish formula has grown into one of the world’s most fabulous monopolies.

By H. W. Kellick

IN quiet, colonial North Quincy, Massachusetts, a small vault-like structure as impenetrable as Fort Knox reverberates with a crash echoed ’round the world by 99 per cent of the professional bands and orchestras. There, behind double-locked doors in an explosion-proofed room, Avedis Zildjian zealously blends his secret cymbal formula kept for over 331 years and handed down to the eldest male of each succeeding generation like the royal crowns of France and Spain.

In 1623 the first Avedis, a Constantinople alchemist searching for the mythical method of making gold from base metals, bent over his smoking crucible and saw a yellow substance that glittered. And it was gold for his descendants who hammered it into the Zildjian cymbal—and one of history’s most fabulous monopolies.

No one has succeeded in duplicating the tone, quality and durability of Zildjian’s metal alloy. Competitors, chemists, scientists have sought the secret as adventurers have sought for Captain Kidd’s treasure— all without success and some with disaster. A German firm in 1925 wasted months of research and a small fortune in tin, copper and silver trying to duplicate the metal then gave up in despair. The Imperial Chemical Company of England experimented for three months before admitting defeat. An American sheet-metal manufacturer attempted to convince Zildjian it could supply him with comparable alloys. To demonstrate the quality of the Zildjian metal to the engineer, Avedis threw on the floor one of his cymbals only 15 thousandths of an inch thick, stamped on it, struck it with a sledgehammer without marring the contours of the disk. Six weeks later the representative returned and decreed it was absolutely impossible to hammer the metal; it was as brittle as glass. Then in 1920 a senior male family member not in the line of inheritance and therefore excluded from the process believed he nevertheless could duplicate it and set up his plant in Mexico City. The first day he blew up the plant and his head, literally, went with it.

A Hollywood producer flew a staff of cameramen and writers to the plant to film Zildjian’s process. They left the same day empty-handed when Avedis refused to divulge his secret.

The blending of the copper, tin and silver is a dangerous process. Explosions occur once or twice a week but the Zildjians have learned how to control them. Before they were localized, however, the plant went through a series of major explosions. After the first blow-up, the Aetna Insurance Co. returned three years’ premiums in full. Another put Avedis in the hospital for four months. Another burned off all his hair and eyebrows. The roof of the laboratory has been blown off so many times that after the last explosion Avedis replaced it with one of six-inch reinforced concrete—to “eliminate the nuisance of repairing it.”

One night about 20 years ago two thieves broke into the plant and in three trips carried off thousands of dollars worth of cymbals. Now a number of huge vaults have been installed. Over the factory windows are metal bars so hard that a special cutting tool is necessary to part them. The windows themselves open at an angle so acute that no human could possibly crawl through them. The entire building is theft-proof.

The modern history of the cymbal began with the first Avedis. As his fame spread he became known to patrons and guilds-men as Zildjian, the Turkish term for cymbalsmith. The cymbal had been used in the highly rhythmic music of the Byzantine civilization and down through the Middle Ages of most of the Eastern nations. When Strungk, Gluck and other romantic composers of the 18th century began to exploit the brilliant effects of the instrument in their scores, the demand spread to Western Europe.

A later Avedis, more salesminded than his predecessor, built a 25-foot schooner, loaded it with his art, and in 1851 sailed from Constantinople to Marseilles and then to London. At Paris and London fairs his cymbals won all prizes for excellence. He died in 1865 leaving two sons, neither of age. The secret passed, according to the Salic law, to his younger brother, Kerope, and in 1910 to Aram, son of the late Avedis. But Aram was as interested in the turbulent politics of Mid-Europe as he was in cymbal making and finally moved to another country, where he experimented with cymbal manufacture. Later when the political unrest subsided, Aram returned to Constantinople and continued his business.

With the World War came martial music, marching bands, drum and bugle corps paced by the clash of the Zildjian cymbal. America went jazz-happy and every band and dance orchestra resounded to its music. The cymbal market shifted to America. In 1929 when Aram decided to retire he passed the secret to the present Avedis.

Avedis Zildjian came to America in 1909 as companion of a son of a wealthy Turkish family. The two boys wandered to Boston where Avedis established a confectionery firm. In 1929 Uncle Aram wrote and told Avedis of his plans to pass on to him the cymbal secret but insisted he return to Constantinople. When Avedis argued that the industry could be established in America, Aram was skeptical. He maintained that a certain proximity to the salt water of the Bosphorus was necessary for the successful blending of the formula and Avedis had to convince him that America’s salt water was equally potent. Only after Aram had come to Massachusetts, tested its salt water and measured carefully the distance from Avedis’ proposed plant site in North Quincy to the ocean and found it was identical with that of the home factory, did he give his consent.

Avedis had difficulty obtaining qualified hammersmiths in America. The best in the country couldn’t handle his metal although he tried many at the then exorbitant rate of $3.00 per hour. With an employe of the original Turkish plant he hammered the cymbals himself and finally imported two metalsmiths from Europe whom he trained for three years. Today these are recognized as the most skillful craftsmen in the world of cymbals.

Because of existing restrictions on importing items which can be made in the country, England prohibits sale of Zildjian cymbals in her markets. Several months ago Avedis received a letter from a Scotsman complaining of the outrageous price he had paid for a Zildjian cymbal. Avedis, who despite increased costs of material has kept his prices at post-war level, wrote in reply, “This particular cymbal sells for $25 in Arnerica. My friend, you bought yours on the black market.”

Cymbals, like wine, improve with age. None is sold less than one year old and some age as long as 15 years. Many thousands now are curing in the Zildjian vaults. About 20,000 are sold each year. Artists such as Gene Krupa, Shelley Mann, Lionel Hampton, Cozy Cole, Louie Bellson, and Boston Symphony, N. Y. Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Co. players appear in person at the plant to select their instruments. Prices range from $7 for the smallest, 7-inch cymbal to $108 for the largest, 28-inch cymbal. Gongs, better than the oriental, cost $132 each.

No two cymbals have the same sound. They vary from 15 to 20 thousandths of an inch in thickness. There are 14 varieties: fast, fast-crash, crash, splash, swish, bounce, bebop, hi-hat, flange hi-hat, ride, finger, concert band, brass band and symphony. There are 25 different ways of playing each.

Avedis has two sons: Armand, the factory manager, and Robert, sales manager. Robert is the younger. Armand has three daughters and the absence of a male descendant caused much worry to the Zildjian household till two years ago when his wife presented him with a son to inherit the secret.

Armand tests all cymbals for tone before they leave the plant and plays in a local band for amusement. Avedis, an expert player himself, and Armand sometimes lock themselves in the curing vault and treat themselves to a concert.

The firm is so unique that it receives much unsolicited publicity. One night while listening to the radio, the Zildjians were startled by the words, “Like the name Avedis Zildjian on a cymbal, the name of DuPont is your assurance of the utmost in quality.” A well-deserved and significant compliment.

Avedis can tell why the family secret has remained as such for so long. “We have never entrusted it to a woman,” he says. “As Americans we respect our wives completely with this one reservation. Mrs. Zildjian can order me to do the shopping, but she has never been allowed through the double-locked doors of our laboratory.”

The cymbals are made of approximately 80 per cent copper, 19 per cent tin and 1 per cent silver. The exact mixing process and chemical formula which marries the metals together is, of course, the Zildjian secret. When they are mixed in the electric furnaces, they emerge as circular ingots. These are tempered still longer and then hand-hammered into final shape even including the center cup which affects the cymbal’s final tone. It takes about seven years to master the technique of hammering and Zildjian has high regard for experts in his employ. Even so, about one cymbal in ten cracks and is ruined during shaping.

Finally they are shaved in a lathe and polished after which they are annealed 10 or 20 times and then tempered 10 or 12 times. Then they go into the curing vaults. Armand tests each carefully by ear before storing and when a great drummer or cymbal player visits the little factory to buy an instrument, he usually says, “Leave it to Armand.”

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America’s Five Favorite Hobbies

By EDWIN TEALE

AMERICA is the hobby center of the world. More money is spent annually on hobbies in the United States than in any other country on earth. From old-fashioned whittling to polarized-light microscopy, a thousand and one spare-time interests provide Americans with relaxation and amusement. Seeking relief from the strain of an uncertain future, millions of persons, in recent months, have joined the ranks of the hobby-riders.

Supplying the needs of America’s vast army of hobbyists has become big business. Factories with incomes of millions of dollars annually cater to the wants of men and women who are following specialized hobbies. Each week sees an increasing number of hobby columns in newspapers and hobby volumes on the shelves of libraries and bookstores.

Among all these infinitely varied avocations, which are the favorite ones? Which attract the most followers? Which represent the greatest annual money investment ? What are America’s five leading hobbies?

To find answers to these questions, Popular Science Monthly, during recent weeks, has been conducting an extensive survey covering individual hobby groups, manufacturers in the hobby field, national organizations devoted in various ways to the furthering of hobbies. On the basis of the number of persons engaged in the particular avocation and the amount of money spent by them during a year, the following five active hobbies emerged at the top of the list: Photography, Stamps, Music, Model Making, Home Workshop.

Have you ever wondered how many Americans collect stamps or own cameras; how many people have home workshops or spend their leisure time operating model railways? On the pages that follow, you will find such information. For up-to-the-minute facts about the nation’s No. 1 avocation—photography—turn to the next page.

PHOTOGRAPHY – 19,500,000 CAMERAS.

LAST YEAR, 19,000,000 amateur camera ‘fans clicked their shutters 600,000,000 times to record still pictures in the United States. They spent, during that year, more than $100,000,000 for film, supplies, and new equipment. The simple box camera, stand-by of amateurs for decades, is still top seller in American photographic stores. In 1939, the latest year for which such statistics are available, box cameras outsold all other types two to one. Of the 1,500,000 new cameras purchased that year, approximately 1,000,000 were box outfits. Miniature 35-millimeter cameras represent only about one percent of those used by American amateurs. The film most widely in demand is No. 120. Most photographed object in America is reported to be Oscar, polar bear at the Rochester, N. Y., Zoo. Eastman technicians try out new films by photographing Oscar’s white coat against a dark background.

Besides America’s 19,000,000 still-camera fans, there are some 500,000 home-movie enthusiasts. Eight-millimeter movie film outsells 16-millimeter in this field and, in the production of America’s leading maker of home-movie film, the Eastman company, Kodachrome leads black-and-white. More than 200 amateur movie clubs are active in the country. The number of still-camera organizations, counting both junior and adult groups, exceeds 9,000. There are about 5,000 adult clubs and approximately 4,000 school and junior photographic organizations in the country. New clubs are being formed at the rate of more than one a week. Nearly 100 such groups are active in the New York City area alone. There are camera clubs composed of doctors, of chemists, of Wall Street brokers, of telephone-company employes, of bankers, of a hundred and one other specialized groups. The largest photographic organization of the kind is one devoted to snapping railroad pictures. With headquarters in New York City, it has more than 15,000 members scattered in virtually every state in the union as well as in foreign countries. Smallest club is said to be a pictorial group with only eight members, four of which live in New York and four in Cuba. They get together for meetings at intervals of two or three years.

STAMPS – 12,000,000 COLLECTORS.

FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS a year, approximately, are being spent by the 12,000,000 Americans whose hobby is stamp collecting. The number of these enthusiasts, according to philatelic authorities, has zoomed from 2,000,000 in 1931 to six times that number in 1941.

During the Government’s last fiscal year, the Post Office Department sold $4,000,000 worth of new stamps to American collectors. This sum represented an almost clear profit for the Government. In New York City, more than 175,000 school children have stamp collections. Issues from countries overrun by Germany are now in greatest demand. All told, there are more than 150,-000 different kinds of stamps listed.

Many present-day enthusiasts are buying stamps as an investment as well as a hobby. A New York newspaper, a few weeks ago, carried an advertisement reading: “An entire lovely island, south shore, Massachusetts. Will consider exchange for North American stamp collection.” At least 10,000 persons in the United States are following a budget plan of stamp buying to build up college funds for their children. There are, experts say, more than fifteen collections in the United States worth $1,000,000 apiece.

MUSIC – 10,000,000 AMATEURS.

ACCORDING to conservative estimates, 10,000,000 Americans turn to music for a hobby. Musical avocations, during the past decade, have gained rapidly in popularity. In 1932, there were approximately 20,000 school bands in the United States. Now, there are 50,000. In 1932, the number of pianos shipped from American factories was 27,274; last year, it was 136,500.

When the first national high-school band competition was held in Chicago, Ill, in 1923, only 25 bands competed. Today, as many as 5,000 take part in the sectional and national competitions. School orchestras, with an average of about 25 players, number in excess of 40,000. Each year, between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000 school children study some kind of instrumental music. In 1924, when National Music Week was first observed, only 800 communities took part. By 1930, the number had reached 2,000, and by 1940, 3,000.

Shifts in popularity of instruments have occurred in recent years. The once-popular banjo has almost disappeared, while the accordion is riding a new high tide of favor. The finest accordions, costing about $1,000, contain more than 3,500 parts and require six weeks to make.

MODELS – 2,250,000 MODELERS.

THE whine of midget gas engines, the whir of miniature plane propellers, the metallic chatter of model railroad trains provide music to the ears of more than 2,250,000 Americans. Last year, approximately 2,000,000 model airplanes were turned out by amateurs in the United States. Nearly a quarter of them were powered by gasoline engines. The other 1,500,000 depended on conventional rubber-band motors. In recent months, the trend in model-plane building, naturally, has been toward military ships. One eastern amateur has a fleet of 15 gas jobs, each equipped with its own power plant. Similar air-cooled engines are being used in streamlined miniature racing cars. Competitions between these mile-a-minute midgets have increased in popularity during the past year and a half.

In all parts of the country, model railroading is as active as ever. Lumping together the “tinplaters,” who buy their equipment ready-made, and the “model railroaders,” who make theirs to scale, there are approximately 250,000 miniature-train enthusiasts in the United States. Last year, they spent $11,000,000 for new electric trains alone. The average model railroader spends about $3 a week on his hobby. More than 100,000 of these hobbyists are said to have equipment that is worth $400 or more.

HOME WORKSHOP 2,000,000 SHOPS IN 2,000,000 home workshops, American hobbyists are finding fun working with tools and making things of wood and metal. Stemming from one of the most time-honored hobbies of all, whittling, home craftwork has branched out in many directions. Approximately one in four shops, 500,000 out of the 2,000,000 total, are equipped with power tools. According to the estimate of one machinery manufacturer, home-workshop hobbyists in the United States install annually about $5,500,000 worth of new electric-driven machines. Approximately 400,000 of the home-workshop fans are fortunate enough to possess power lathes. The average amount spent in twelve months by the confirmed home workshopper on tools and materials runs between $50 and $100.

Both farm and city dwellers enjoy home workshops. A few years ago, when a leading farm journal made a survey of its readers, it discovered that 27 percent of all the farmers who replied to the questionnaire had home workshops and spent their leisure on craft projects.

Besides woodworking, carving, furniture-making, and metal work, there are numerous specialized branches of home-workshop activity. One of the leading variations of the kind is amateur radio. The 56,000 licensed amateurs in the country construct, operate, and repair their own wireless sets. They range from schoolboys to octogenarians. The youngest is 11 and the oldest 88. One amateur has a layout that cost $25,000 while scores of “ham” operators get along on a total investment of $25. Banded together in The American Radio Relay League, 26,000 of these amateurs help maintain communication when floods or storms interrupt telegraph and telephone service.

Fifty-Cent Phonograph May Pierce Iron Curtain

A new weapon for sending messages behind the Iron Curtain without danger of radio jamming has been offered to the U. S. by RCA. It’s a refinement of the basic hand phonograph and could be mass-produced for 50 cents each.

The little machine is in three unbreakable plastic parts—base, turntable and tone arm —and can be packed to drop by parachute.
Heart of the design is a clear-plastic semi-circular vibrator screwed inside the top end of a guard. A plastic cube cemented on takes the needle in a force fit. RCA designers say that they get best results from a common steel needle of the long-playing kind. A metal crank spins the table.

Records are 78-r.p.m. unbreakable-plastic seven-inchers costing five cents, but the arm can take a 10-inch record. The speed, common in Europe, is easy for hand turning.

Builds Organ of 550 Pipes in a Garage

Using his garage as a workshop, and giving only his spare time to the task, H. T. Adams, of Ham, Surrey, England, built the 550-pipe organ shown in the photograph at the left. Although Adams, an automotive engineer, had had no previous training in the work, he constructed every part of the twelve-foot-high organ himself, except the metal pipes. The only plans which he employed were those to guide him in assembling the intricate mechanism of the console.

HARP UNDER WATER

The attractive harpist who is shown above comfortably submerged in 5 feet of water is illustrating one of science’s newest gifts to music: the underwater harp. This invention is not as silly as it might seem. Ever since David first serenaded King Saul, harpists have been at the mercy of moisture. Damp days changed the tune of their strings, mostly made of gut, and sometimes even caused them to snap. This problem was not solved until Melville Clark, a harp manufacturer of Syracuse, N.Y. who is a harpist himself and used to accompany Tenor John McCormack, developed strings made of nylon. These not only outwore the gut strings but also successfully resisted the elements.

Recently Clark went himself one better, produced a completely waterproof Irish harp and induced the NBC Symphony’s pretty harpist, Elaine Vito, to plunge into a glass tank with it. Miss Vito had a difficult time staying under water because both she and the harp showed a tendency to float. She did stay down long enough to pluck a few aquatic arpeggios and to prove to her satisfaction that the harp definitely withstood wetting. It had kept its tune and showed, as she put it, “an enchanting liquid tone.” Mr. Clark has already begun preparing to go into mass production and he expects his new harp to sell for $99.50. “It will be ideal,” he says, “to accompany bathtub singers.”

New “Light Piano” Using Photo Electric Cells Creates All Musical Sounds

ONE of the most amazing musical instruments ever known has been recently invented by Prof. Arthur C. Hardy of the department of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The device looks like a grand piano with a three octave keyboard, and it is not much larger than an ordinary card table. It is described by its inventor as: “an instrument in which beams of light and a photo electric cell have been utilized to produce entirely new musical sounds by optical means.”

This new instrument can imitate sounds of all existing types of musical instruments, including wind, string, and percussion. The inventors hope that the symphony orchestra of the future will be able to utilize a dozen or so of these new pianos in place of the customary 75 or 100 men.

The heart of the “light piano” is a glass disc on which are recorded photographically a number of concentric sound tracks This disc is rotated rapidly in front of a photo electric cell, as shown in the photo at the right, and light from a small lamp is allowed to pass through the sound tracks, thereby generating currents in the photo-electric cell that are amplified and fed into a loud speaker The pitch of each note is determined by the number of wave lengths on each sound track.

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FREAK Musical STUNTS Make Fun and PROFITS

FOR parties, picnics, and all such gatherings where entertainment is the outstanding feature, there’s nothing that furnishes quite so much amusement as a freak musical rendition. And if you’re the person who can keep the crowd amused you’ll be the hero of the day.

A number of simple tricks in music which you can master with a little practice have been devised by Dr. C. C. Wiedemann, a prof at the University of Nebraska. Not only can you liven up a party with these stunts, but, if you’re good enough, you can earn a few extra shekels to help balance the family budget.

One of the easiest musical tricks to perform is to “produce music from a felt hat.” All you need is a rubber doll that squeaks, a violin bow and a felt hat borrowed from the audience.

With a little sleight of hand put the doll into the hat and under the thumb of the left hand in such a way that when the pressure of the thumb against the doll is released the doll squeaks. Then put the bow up to the brim of the hat and, holding it there a moment, say: “Sing to me, hat! sing to me!” Then draw down the bow, at the same time releasing the thumb pressure on the rubber-doll. The result is a squeaking sound that mystifies your audience. They can’t understand how a bow drawn across a felt hat produces such tones.

“Music on the head” is a tuneful oddity which may be accomplished much easier than one would think. This music is produced by tapping on the top and near the front of the head with a specially constructed mallet.

Materials needed to construct the mallet are illustrated in an accompanying drawing. Bore a one-fourth inch hole through the center the length of the cork and then glue one end of the twig into the hole. Next wrap the cork very tightly with the twine until the ball formed is between 1-1/4 and 1-1/2 ins. in diameter.

The throat and head cavities are adjusted to accommodate the many tones of the singing voice in order to accomplish this trick. Immediately after the muscles of the throat are adjusted to accommodate a tone, the top of the head is tapped with the mallet.

The mouth held open helps to intensify the sound of the tone. “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” is probably the easiest tune to play on the head and the beginner should use this piece to practice on.

A “human pipe organ” may be obtained by securing a number of bottles, with a person to manipulate each bottle, as depicted in an accompanying photo. The bottles are played by placing the lower lip against the top-edge of the open end of a bottle. Then move the lower jaw slowly up and down with the muscles of the neck, at the same time expelling air until a point is discovered which causes the bottle to sound.

The materials needed are six two-quart and four one-quart grape-juice or beer bottles.

Tuning the “Human Pipe Organ”

Plenty of water will be needed for tuning the bottles. First blow the tone of one of the empty two-quart bottles and place it at the left-hand end of the “musical instrument.” Then whistle or hum the reveille bugle call, beginning with the tone of the empty two-quart bottle. Pour water into another two-quart bottle until the tone is the same as the second tone of the bugle call. Pour water into a third two-quart bottle until its tone is the same as third tone of the bugle call.

Now pour water into one of the one-quart bottles until its tone is the same as the highest tone of the bugle call. This tone should be one octave above the tone of the first empty two-quart bottle. You now have constructed Do, Fa, La, Do of the vocal scale.

To complete the tuning process, pour a little water into another two-quart bottle. Begin with Fa, the tone of the two-quart bottle which you tuned second, and hum the first three tones of l”My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Tune the bottle to the same tone as the third tone of the song. Call it Sol. Sing Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol. Pour water into a two-quart bottle until the tone is the same as Mi, and then regulate the water in another bottle of the same size until its tone is the same as Re.

Quantity of Water Determines Notes Begin with the tone of the bottle corresponding to Mi and sing the first six tones of “Annie Laurie.” The sixth is Ti. Pour water into a one-quart bottle until its tone is the same as the Ti which you sang. Continue to tune the remaining two one-quart bottles to correspond to the Re and Mi which are one octave higher than the Re |and Mi of the two-quart bottles. The ten bottles when properly tuned and in order should represent the vocal scale, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do, Re, Mi.

As many people cannot read the note symbolism of music, Dr. Weidemann has devised a very simple system of “number music” to indicate the different tones to be played. To use this system, arrange the musical bottles as illustrated in an accompanying drawing. Here’s how you’d play “The Last Rose of Summer”.

Verse: 1-2-3-8-7-6-5-5-3

1-2-3-5-3-2-1-1

1-2-3-8-7-6-5-5-3

1-2-3-5-3-2-1-1

5-3-8-7-6-5-5-3

5-3-8-7-6-5-6-7-8

1-2-3-8-7-6-5-5-3

1-2-3-5-3-2-1-1 The number music for “Annie Laurie”:

3-2-1-1-8-7-7-6-6-5-3-3-2-1-2

3-2-1-1-8-7-7-6-6-5-3-2-1-1

5-8-8-9-9-10

5-8-8-9-9-10 10-9-8-7-6-8-6-5-3

3-2-1-8-3-2-1-1

Number music for other simple tunes such as “Old Black Joe” and “Silent Night” can be figured out by the player.

Playing on musical glasses is a trick closely related to the “human pipe organ.” Either table or jelly glasses more or less filled with water to form the musical scale are needed for the musical glasses. The rims of the glasses are tapped with prepared mallets to produce the tones, but if very thin large glass tumblers are used, the sounds can be produced by putting resin on the finger tips and rubbing the rims of the glasses gently with the finger-tips to produce unusually clear and beautiful tones. Tuning is done in the manner of the “human pipe organ.”

Leader Twirls Dials To Conduct Band

INSTEAD of waving a baton, Buddy Wagner, New York dance-band leader, twirls dials and levers on a control panel to mix the tones and adjust the volume of each section of his novel electrified orchestra. Crystal pick-ups are attached to each instrument, and the music produced is amplified and then wired to three loudspeakers set in front of the electric swing band, as seen in the photograph above.

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Boom in Bands PUTS AMERICA IN MARCH TIME

TWENTY THOUSAND American communities support school bands which are trained by experts and stimulated by colorful national tournaments. This amazing new movement, transforming the old “town band” into a crack musical organization, is described by Mr. May, who recently told of the similar boom in drum and bugle corps

By Earl Chapin May

FOR three hot hours of a June Saturday, an excited multitude in Drake Stadium, Des Moines, Iowa, watched bands from Massachusetts, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa contend for prizes in marching. The spectators cheered like football fans when the marchers joined 5,000 other boys and girls and closed the Eighth Annual National High-School Band Contest by a thrilling rendition of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever.

The moment official awards were announced, there was a rush to wire good or bad news to friends and relatives in communities actively interested in a contest between the pick of the 20,000 school bands which are increasing American harmony. Chosen by local, state, district, and national tryouts, the youthful contestants represented the best amateur performance on reed, brass and percussion instruments. They were the net results of a boom in bands which began two decades ago as an outgrowth of a boom in drum corps described in the September number of Popular Science Monthly.

Drum corps date from colonial days, and our first important military band was organized shortly after the Revolution. Our oldest amateur band in point of continuous existence is the Stonewall Brigade Band of Staunton, Va., organized in 1845.

But the myriads of juvenile school bands trace their descent from the Farm and Trades School Band organized during 1858 on Thompson’s Island in Boston Harbor. Like most other amateur bands, the Boston organization was started by kids who, probably inspired by brilliant though brassy circus bands, made “music” through tissue paper spread on common hair combs. These hair-comb musicians were joined by three young violin scrapers. Later additions were a bass fiddle or double bass; a saxhorn (which resembled the modern alto), and a cornopean, ancestor of the modern cornet.

A teacher named John Ripley Morse developed this nucleus into a band which became part of a thousand-piece organization directed by the famous Patrick S. Gilmore at the Boston Peace Jubilee of 1869. Keeping pace with the times, it won first place in its class at the 1929 Massachusetts Boys’ Band Contest and first prize at a subsequent New England Band Contest.

In the meanwhile, American youth ran amuck with the band idea. Before our current movement for better and bigger bands for juveniles was initiated, most small-town amateur bandsmen were terrible. I know, because I was one of them. As a boy cornetist, side-stepping lung trouble, I barged into leadership of the Rochelle (111.) Kid Band which grew into the Rochelle Military Band with a silver cornet painted on its bass-drum head.

We blew blue notes in imitation of our elders. The local undertaker taught us gratis. The group disbanded every fall, after cashing in on Fourth of July and county-fair engagements. Captious citizens often cussed us. Less crabbed ones dropped coins into our hats and thus gave us a fresh start each spring. This program was followed by most of our tooting con- temporaries. The Silver Cornet Band was colorful, but it and its public suffered from lack of professional guidance and systematic sponsorship.

Contests have taken most of the curse out of our amateur band performances. Local pride has been replaced by sensible supervision. Amateur band music has become enjoyable and cultural. Its improvement can be properly credited to the Landers Band Tax Law and the contest idea.

Major George W. Landers, of Clarinda, Iowa, started a movement in 1921 for legislation to permit minor cities to tax themselves for support of municipal bands. The law has been adopted in forty-eight states. Major Landers, well in his seventies, is one of the few reformers who have lived to see their reforms really working.

The contest idea, sponsored by the National Bureau for the Advancement of Music, the Music Educators’ National Conference and finally by the National School Band Association, began in 1926 with a national band contest at Fostoria, Ohio. Ten states selected would-be champion bands by competitive eliminations. The members of each band were selected by section competitions. A section is a division composed of the same or related instruments, such as reeds or brasses.

Thirteen bands—one from as far away as Ogden, Utah—participated in that Fostoria contest. Fostoria’s 10,000 citizens were hosts to the visiting band boys, who were not allowed to spend a penny in the Ohio community. The Joliet, Ill., High-School Band won on performance, appearance, and marching, by a fraction of a point.

Joliet won again at Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1927. In 1928, it won in its own home town, although Modesto, Calif., spent $15,000 of publicly subscribed money to send its boys’ band to Joliet in private Pullman cars. The Joliet High School Band thus gained permanent possession of the national championship trophy, and could not attend the Denver contest of 1929 except as guest band with Director Archie McAllister, its conductor. But the citizens of Joliet raised the expense money, largely through selling “Send the Band to Denver” buttons.

At Denver, the Nicholas Senn High School, of Chicago, topped them all, including persistent Modesto. It repeated this performance at the 1930 Flint, Mich., contest. Then Joliet, permitted to reenter the arena, carried away first prize for all class-A bands at Tulsa, Okla. By this time, the official National Contest had become so popular that it was necessary to classify the bands. Class A came from schools having more than 750 enrolled pupils; class B from schools having from 250 to 750; class C from schools having less than 250 enrolled pupils. By 1933, when seventy-five bands contested at Evanston, Ill., it was necessary to substitute for “first prize” in class A an “Outstanding Band” designation. Joliet got away with that one, too.

Bandmaster Archie McAllister might never have been a master of America’s champion high-school band or president ex officio of the National School Band Association had it not been for his lean- ing toward woodworking. Although he bought a brass cornet and started a rural band near Joliet in his youth, he had gone into Montana fruit ranching to make a living. As an avocation he turned to woodworking. His ability in his home workshop attracted the attention of the Jewish Training Schools in Chicago, which engaged him to teach carpentering and manual training. He later went to Joliet to do similar work in its public schools.

Archie’s first band of twelve young members rehearsed in his carpenter shop. He started his first public-school band with a $2 allowance for each rehearsal. This band was unpopularly known as “The Disease.” By choosing members for loyalty, as much as ability, he began to win prizes. Then he got a real salary as director and a trip for his band to Washington, D. C.

Archie McAllister’s method with the Joliet High School Band is typical of many of his competitors. He picks his players from all classes in a city of 60,000. Solo competitions for national prizes are among the later wrinkles in high-school band contests. Leonard Bradley, Joliet’s solo-oboe prize winner, is the son of a mail carrier; Raymond Tremmeling, who has won national prizes as a clarinetist, is the son of a street-car motor-man; Robert Harris, prize-winning French-horn player, is the son of an undertaker, while Glenn Henderson, twice winner of the national prize for cornetists, is son of an electrician. And there are several farmers in that band.

Jack Wainwright took Charles Munger off a farm near Fostoria and taught the boy to hold his mouthpiece loosely against his lips, to breathe from the diaphragm like a singer, to depend on his tongue for attacking a tone. In four years young Munger played a cornet solo with Sousa’s Band before 20,000 visitors at the Ohio State Fair!

Of course, the first step in selecting recruits and assigning them to instruments is to test them for tone sense.. An easy method is to play a tone like C or G on a cornet or piano, then ask the pupil to sound the same tone on his instrument. If the pupil can not do this readily, the teacher switches him to drums or cymbals where only a sense of time or rhythm is necessary.

Assigning pupils to instruments depends largely on the teeth. If a pupil’s teeth project abnormally, he is not destined for wind instruments. If upper and lower teeth overlap, they will make trouble in cornet playing. If they are large and meet evenly, they approach the ideal. If the lower teeth recede, they are almost hopeless for any horn with a small mouthpiece, which should be held at right angles from the teeth. This applies to all reed instruments except clarinets, which can be played with the bell pointing downward at an angle of thirty-five degrees.

The lungs, of course, figure in wind-instrument playing. Dr. James F. Rogers, of the United States Bureau of Education, has proved by statistics based on a study of hundreds of prominent musicians who lived between 1700 and 1900, that players on wind instruments live longer than the average. In certain cases, playing the saxophone, the flute, or the cornet has definitely stayed the progress of tuberculosis. But the formation of the teeth is all-important, for it is “tonguing,” and not blowing, that makes a good wind-instrument player.

Tone is made, primarily, on any musical instrument with a cup-shaped mouthpiece, by the tongue’s attack. Hence you will never see a good bandsman puffing out his cheeks when playing. While Frank Fitzgerald was director of the Rockford, Ill., Military Band he might be the only cornetist on a march down Main Street, but you could hear him at all times above forty other instruments. He weighed less than 130 pounds, and was not barrel-chested. A dimple showed in each cheek while he played. But he got plenty of volume while hitting high C’s and high E’s, because he used his tongue properly and played with the “non-pressure system.”

This system was then a novelty. Under it, high tones were made by contracting loose lips, which thus did not become sore or grow weary from “punching” and vibration, and were not deprived of their natural blood circulation. The bands from Mason City, Iowa, and Harrison High School, of Chicago, and the famous band from Joliet, could not have won the three highest honors at Des Moines last June if their members had depended upon blowing into instead of tonguing their instruments. Moderately thick lips do the best work in metal, cup-shaped mouthpieces. Size of player and size of instrument are not necessarily associated. B. A. Rolfe, distinguished band leader and brilliant cornetist, is notably tall and ponderous. Clara Bloodgood, weighing 110 pounds, plays the exceedingly difficult “triple-tongue” solo (written originally for the cornet), Levy-Anthem Polka, on the Sousaphone, largest of all brass instruments. And she doesn’t get red in the face or puff out her cheeks, although the Sousaphone is a double B-flat bass horn weighing thirty pounds—sometimes forty, depending upon the thickness of metal tubing used.

Possibly made curious by the impressive development of school bands, Prof. Carl E. Seashore of the University of Iowa and Prof. Elmer E. Jones of Northwestern University have made elaborate laboratory tests on more than 5,000 students to determine alertness, rhythm, dexterity, precision, memory, and coordination of brain and muscle possessed by prospective instrumentalists.

So far, most of the amateurs join bands through pure love of music. Intelligent instruction keeps them going.

The Arthur, 111., High School has 160 pupils. Its class-C band of eighty-two members, directed by George C. Wall, was creditably placed in the second division at the 1933 National Contest. The school maintains a second or “feeder” band of twenty members.

Four years ago the Washington High School Band of Sioux Falls, S. D., had practically no musical experience. Director Arthur H. Thompson took hold of it. The band now permanently possesses a first-prize trophy won three times in succession in state contests.

Winning bands must play classical selections with sixty or more able members and a balanced, symphonic instrumentation. Most class-A bands have 100 members.

Lenoir, N. C, has a population of 4,000 and a high-school band originally sponsored by the local post of the American Legion. That band started the high-school contest idea in North Carolina, as a class-B band. It got so good it had to step up and compete, under a handicap, with class-A bands from cities ten times larger than Lenoir. But it kept winning prizes.

Last year the North Carolina State Legislature made drastic cuts in school appropriations which threatened to put an end to systematic school music. The citizens of Lenoir promptly voted to pay a tax to keep its band going.

In addition to pointing steadily toward state and national contests, nearly all school bands hope to have representation in the National High-School Band which is instructed by eminent musicians for eight weeks each summer at Interlochen, Mich. This band camp is unique.

The 200 or more members of the National High-School Band are carefully selected by local music supervisors and by Dr. Joseph E. Maddy of the University of Michigan. The band feeds into the National High-School Orchestra.

Dr. “Joe” Maddy, father of the Camp at Interlochen, believes that ten years from now each of our cities of more than 10,000 population will be supporting a genuine, all-American symphony orchestra. Maddy, who came up from a small town band, is not a visionary. He is supremely practical.

MINIATURE PHONOGRAPH

From Switzerland comes the Thorens record player that folds away into a 2″ by 5″ by 11″ camera-model carrying case weighing a little over 5 lb. In tone and volume it is said to be comparable to full-sized acoustic phonographs. One winding of the motor is needed for each side of a 10″ or 12″ record. Rexon Inc., of New York, distributes the phonograph in the United States. Under $30.

Phonograph-Movie Machine Plays Tunes for Pictures

A COMBINATION phonograph, and motion-picture projector that plays appropriate music as the film is being shown has been invented by A. L. Edminson, of Los Angeles, Calif. After eight years of experiment he has combined the two machines into a cabinet slightly larger than that of the standard phonograph. The upper part contains the phonograph; the lower a motion-picture projector.

The films are exhibited on a silk screen, measuring 18 by 22 inches, which is placed behind the doors of the sounding-box. It is claimed that the pictures are projected clearly enough to be seen by an audience 40 feet away.

Little change has been made in the phonograph, except that the speed governor of the record also controls the rate at which the film is displayed. Similarly, an adjusting clutch starts the record and the film simultaneously. The film is placed in a fireproof magazine, passes through a fireproof gate, over an adjusting sprocket and thence loops downward through the lens gate and back through the release sprocket. After exposure the film rewinds automatically. A cord and plug fit an electric-light socket for power and light, and a system of multiple mirrors gives a fairly large focal projection length in a small space. The illumination of the screen is so intense that the films can be exhibited in broad daylight.

Silent Violin Makes Its Debut
THE noiseless violin, which can be heard only by the person playing it, is the result of experiments by a German inventor. The instrument should be a boon to student musicians, who may now practice at any time without disturbing the neighbors.

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Blazing NEW TRAILS for Music

MUSIC is an art, the making of instruments a science. That may explain, in some measure, how Laurens Hammond has been able to invent the electric organ and the Novachord, even though he cannot play a piano.

By inclination and training, the unmusical Mr. Hammond is an inventor. On his desk is a large binder full of patents that have been issued to him. The first one, dated 1912, is for a barometer he developed when he was but sixteen years old. His earlier efforts were in connection with Diesel engines, three dimensional pictures, and novel stage-lighting effects, but the turning point in his career was his synchronous motor. He used it as the heart of the first electric clocks he made in a small room over a store building in Evanston, Ill., and almost overnight there was a national clamor for them. The shop mushroomed into a large plant.

Hammond started looking around for other fields in which his delicate mechanism might be put to work. A combination clock and calendar was his first adaptation and this he followed with a synchronous phonograph motor, and finally the electric playing-card shuffler.

But Hammond’s main inventive dish— the electric organ—called not for a Bach or even a Leopold Stokowski, as you might suppose, but an infinitely patient engineer with a thorough grounding in the laws of sound.

Didn’t music depend on physics? If one tone could be produced with electrical impulses, as was the case with the dial signal on the automatic telephone, why couldn’t other tones of the scale?

The inventor proceeded to work out a practicable way of producing, varying, and swelling sounds electrically. Ninety-one alternating-current generators of the electric-clock type, each operating at a different frequency, were rigged up to a synchronous motor. Thus, at the touch of a key, electrical vibrations would generate the sound, which could be amplified to any de- sired volume. The ninety-one tone wheels, Hammond found, were capable of producing approximately 253 million shades of tone.

Musicians were impressed. Here was a new sound-producing agency, the first important one to come along in several thousand years. What was more, the sound source was vibrated in a manner never before attempted, a way that made possible the absolute control of the physical qualities of each tone.

Composers and concert artists who normally sniff at scientific music applauded the electric organ. George Gershwin bought the first one, other musical headliners followed.

For the price of a grand piano, churches unable to buy pipe organs found a substitute in this compact instrument that used about ten dollars worth of current a year and never got out of tune. Home organ music, once a luxury, began to be heard in small homes. Within a few months, more than 800 organs were sold.

Two years ago Hammond, after seeing his electric organ carried to more than forty foreign countries, went to work on a second electric instrument, the Novachord, the successful development of which has given the musical world food for conversation and speculation the last few months.

Contrary to popular belief, the talented offspring of the electric organ is not designed to imitate any regular instrument and according to Hammond, its full potentialities are not manifest in the familiar melodies now being played on it. But until music in line with its versatility is written for it, the instrument, which might be mistaken for an old-fashioned spinet at first glance, must remain a musical mimic. Played in the manner of a piano, it yields not only piano and harpsichord tones but simulates the effects of the violin, cello, French horn, Hawaiian steel guitar. But in place of pipes, reeds, strings, hammers or vibrating parts, it has circuits of ordinary vacuum tubes.

From the viewpoint of an engineer, Hammond feels the development of musical instruments should lie in the direction of making them more flexible and versatile so that composers and musicians will have new tools permitting them greater freedom in the expression of their art.

“An artist,” he points out, “who is going to paint a picture buys a canvas and a box of pure color paints. The canvas has no lines on it and he mixes every shade of color himself. What he paints is entirely his own doing. He would scorn any offer of mixed paints such as ‘flesh pink’ or ’sunset red.’ The musician, on the other hand, has never been able to get musical instruments which have not been ‘voiced’ by the maker of the instrument. The builder in his shop has picked the ‘nice tone’ to put into the instrument, and the musician must be satisfied with it or by some other builder’s fine tone. This is simply the ‘flesh pink’ idea in a different form, and for this reason the composer has never enjoyed the freedom of the painter.

“Naturally, too much freedom may not produce the best results immediately. An instrument which is flexible enough to allow the musician to explore new possibilities in beautiful tone colors, will also permit him to blunder into horrid noises. This, however, is the exact way in which art makes progress.”

Already composers, young writers with fresh vision, are seeking to combine the resources of the past with the new music materials engineering science is making possible.

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The Buescher Saxophone is so perfected and simplified that it is the easiest of all musical instruments to learn. It is the one instrument that everyone can play—and it wholly satisfies that craving everybody has to personally produce music- You can learn the scale in an hour’s practice, play popular music in a few weeks and take your place in an Orchestra or Band within 90 days, if you so desire. Nothing can take the place of a Saxophone for home entertainment, church, lodge, school. It increases the pleasure you get out of life, increases your popularity and your opportunities.

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Englishman Invents Portable Player Piano Powered by Hand Pedals

VACATIONISTS have never wanted for musical entertainment on their sojourns in out of the way places, for manufacturers have been quick to meet the demand with portable radios, phonographs, and the like. And now, along comes an English inventor, W. R. Wearham, and rigs up a portable player piano which can be folded up in two sections and carried in a harp-shaped case.

The chief feature of this piano is that the foot pedal which supplies the motive power is supplanted by a hand pedal, the pneumatic action operating directly on the keyboard, as shown in the photo at the left. The piano has as fine a tone quality as any other player piano and weighs less than most portable radio sets.

MEGAPHONE AMPLIFIES HARMONICA MUSIC

THE volume of a harmonica can be increased for playing in public, especially in large auditoriums or outdoors, by amplifying the sound with a medium-sized megaphone.

A slot is cut in the megaphone about 3 in. from the mouthpiece, and oyer this is riveted a metal holder made as illustrated below with two lips to grip the harmonica, which is of the “marine band” type.

When full volume is desired, the player places his left hand over the mouthpiece, causing practically alt the sound to pass out through the bell. A slight mute is obtained by extending the right hand over the bell.

Because greater volume is attained with less effort, this idea helps players who have experienced difficulty from lack of breath. Furthermore, the player does not have to face his audience directly, which is an advantage if he suffers from nervousness. Of course, when he carries the megaphone on the stage, he looks like a “crooner,” but as soon as he starts playing —well there’s a surprise in store for the audience.—Robert D. Pike.

PHOTO AND MESSAGE ON PHONOGRAPH POST CARD

Here is a new way to send a greeting to a friend. Phonograph records on post cards have been made before, but now a German inventor has combined the record with a real photograph. The sender has his picture taken, records his voice on top of it, and the result is a personal record ready for the mail. A long message is recorded on several post cards, each one numbered.

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Mickey Mouse Goes Classical

By ANDREW R. BOONE

MOVING sound has been added to moving pictures to bring greater realism to the screen. Accompanying Walt Disney’s newest Technicolor creation, “Fantasia,” in which Mickey Mouse and a host of new companions perform to the rhythms of classical music, this latest Hollywood invention made its first public appearance a few weeks ago at the Broadway Theater in New York.

Moving sound is literally that. Four circuits using sixty loudspeakers make it possible to chase music right around an audience, out of the screen and back into it, or make notes die away into infinity overhead. The sound equipment alone fills thirty-five packing cases. For that reason “Fantasia” will be screened only in selected metropolitan theaters where the speaker systems can be installed.

Two years of painstaking work by Disney, R.C.A. engineers, and 1,000 Disney assistants went into “Fantasia,” which is really a pictorial interpretation of seven great compositions. The music is by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Deems Taylor, music critic and composer, aided in making the production.

Behind “Fantasia” lies Walt Disney’s desire to always give the public something new and better than what they have known in the past.

“We know,” he said recently, “that music emerging from one speaker behind the screen sounds thin, tinkly, and strainy. We wanted to reproduce such beautiful masterpieces as Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria,’ and Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony so that audiences would feel as though they were standing on the podium with Stokowski.”

To achieve this effect, he knew that means must be found to spread sound throughout the theater, that “point sources” must be concealed from the ear. The sound recordings must be such that each and every instrument or voice would be heard clearly and distinctly in its proper proportion to the whole orchestral effect.

The recording alone for “Fantasia” took almost eighteen months. Approximately 3,000,000 feet of sound track from individual takes, prints, and remakes were condensed into the final 10,778-foot, four-track negative.

Neither Disney nor the engineers knew just where the experiment would lead when the 110 members of the orchestra first took their places on the stage of the Philadelphia Academy of Music early in April, 1939. Thirty-three microphones faced the musicians. From them nine channels carried the music to nine recorders set up in the basement of the building. Seven channels transmitted sounds from individual groups of instruments such as the wood winds and the violins. The eighth caught the complete orchestration, while the ninth carried the beat of a telegraph instrument which later enabled the animators in Hollywood to fit the action of “Fantasia” to the tempo of the music.

Seven weeks Stokowski and the orchestra labored. All that time a second director faced the recording instruments, guiding the recording on film of each passage. From a duplicate score he brought choirs in and out, stepped up solos. Engineers tuned volume controls, guided by oscilloscopes which told them just how much sound was coming through their machines.

Exactly 483,000 feet of sound track were recorded in forty-two days. Cans of film were shipped by air to Hollywood for processing. After that retakes were made where necessary to obtain exactly the desired tonal combinations of choirs, soloists, and instruments.

Then came the problem of mixing these sound tracks into one realistic whole. First the engineers tried multiple speakers fed by a single sound-transmission system. That spread the sound over a wide area, but when the characters spoke, the synchronization of words and lip movements was lost.

There were further experiments before the producers were satisfied. The solution was finally found in combining the nine tracks into four; three for “entertainment sounds,” such as voices, music, and special effects, and the fourth for a control frequency governing the volume of the other three.

Operators in the projection booths of theaters where “Fantasia” is presented will face no unusual complications. Their problems will be the routine ones of threading the film and focusing the picture.

Related posts

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• What Big Arms You Have . . . and So Many (Jan, 1941)
• Nutty Inventions Paid Me A Million – by Rube Goldberg (Jan, 1941)
• What Makes MICKEY MOUSE Move? (Jan, 1941)
• Sound Tricks of Mickey Mouse (Jan, 1941)

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ANTIQUE JUKE BOXES

A rare find in a dusty attic led to Louis Kernstein’s role as an expert on old music machines.

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, Louis Kernstein found an old, dusty victrola in the attic of his family home in Freehold, N. J. The machine was in sad need of repair and Louis scoured his neighborhood for parts. He didn’t find the parts but he did discover all kinds of music boxes and machines which formed the basis of his present remarkable collection.

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Beam of Light Carries Music

Powerful Ray Speeds Radio Program Across Half-Mile of City Buildings RADIO fans witnessed a twentieth-century marvel, the other night, when they listened to a radio program transmitted over a ray of light.

High in the tower of the Chrysler Building, in New York City, an orchestra played before a microphone. No land wire linked it to the broadcasting studio half a mile away. Instead, the blue beam of a 50.000-candlepower searchlight sped the music across intervening rooftops. At a studio window, a big lens caught the beam and concentrated it upon a photoelectric cell so that the music could be picked up and put on the air. So clearly was the program received that many broadcast listeners were unaware of its unusual method of transmission.

Using a ray of light as a telephone wire is not a new idea. John Bellamy Taylor, General Electric Company pioneer in exploring its experimental possibilities, talked in this way from the airship Los Angeles to the earth, and, more recently, transmitted voices to Schenectady, N. Y., from a mountain top twenty-five miles away. Until now, however, light-beam telephony has been virtually a laboratory plaything. A new system that made its debut in the recent radio demonstration promises to make it commercially useful. How can you talk over a light beam? Simply by devising a way to make a lamp flicker in unison with the fluctuations of your voice. Then a photoelectric cell within the lamp’s range will serve as a receiver, the light pulsations being converted into electric impulses and made audible through a loudspeaker. The talking ray can be aimed squarely at the receiving station so that no one outside its path can intercept its message, and can even be made invisible for secret messages in wartime.

The main problem of experimenters has been to find a light sufficiently responsive to go on and off as many as 10,000 times a second (a necessary speed to make speech or music sound natural) and still brilliant enough to be projected great distances. Neither neon glow lamps nor arc lamps, which have been tried in a microphone-and-amplifier circuit, have combined ideally these absolutely essential qualities.

Now the long-sought light source appears to have been found, in a remarkable wireless lamp perfected by Elman B. Myers, radio engineer and inventor. It is an oddly-shaped quartz tube about eight inches long, to which no electric wires are connected. When the tube is placed inside a high-frequency electric coil, a thimbleful of mercury within it turns to vapor and emits a dazzling blue light that may be flashed on and off at least as many as 400.000 times a second! Mounted in a searchlight, as in the radio test described, the beam of this lamp carries for five miles; and more powerful lamps of similar design are expected to increase the range to forty or fifty miles. The system permits communication by day or night, regardless of rain, snow, or fog, according to J. L. Cassell, chief engineer of the New York firm developing it. Its first commercial trial is scheduled for the end of March when an attempt will be made to talk to an incoming liner.

TESTS NOW SHOW IF CHILD IS TONE DEAF OR MUSICAL

Has Junior a natural ear for music? Or are his piano lessons wasted effort? It’s easy to find out at once, according to Prof. Harold M. Williams, of the University of Iowa Child Welfare Research Station. Tests he has devised show whether a child has a real sense of rhythm and whether he can keep a tune in singing.

A rhythm hammer provides the first test. With it a.child is asked to tap on a plate, in time with the clicks of a special electric clock. Electric wires lead from plate and clock to another room, where on a chart whirled by a phonograph turntable an automatic pen records how closely the child has followed the clock’s beat. In another test, a child is asked to sing a song he has learned. An experimenter sits near by with a telephone transmitter. In another room, a special photographic apparatus makes a sound picture of the child’s singing and shows whether he can carry a tune.

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There’s Music in Everything

HAVE you ever been lulled to sleep by the musical click of the wheels as your train sped over steel rails? Have your fighting instincts been aroused by staccato drum beats or have you listened to tunes played on such improvised instruments as a musical saw, a length of pipe with a funnel in one end, a comb and piece of tissue paper, or a deflating automobile tube whose valve was fingered by the performer?

For centuries, in striving to create music, man has been extracting sounds from all kinds of material, ranging from crude logs to highly polished glass. Even Benjamin Franklin as long ago as 1750 experimented with a glass harmonica, producing tunes by placing his rosined fingers on revolving glass.

Is there really music in everything? The growing popularity of many recently devised musical devices used on both professional and amateur radio programs has aroused the interest of science in this question. On one radio program, for example, the jawbone of a horse is being used in the orchestra as a percussion instrument. On another, the bazooka, consisting of two pieces of lead pipe with a funnel in one end, produces weird music, while on amateur hours musical devices ranging from a one-stringed homemade fiddle improvised from a kitchen broom to a set of wine glasses and tumblers containing varying amounts of water have been used.

Sound engineers and other scientists recently have interested themselves in the technical aspects of the sounds produced by improvised musical instruments of this type and have found that in some cases their sound vibrations, photographed with the aid of an oscillograph, compare favorably with those of the more familiar musical instruments.

Psychologists and music critics, however, have looked elsewhere for the answer as to whether there is music in everything. Sound, many psychologists point out, is the medium whereby the higher animals express their emotions, and sound conveyed by varying tones had a basic appeal long before the language of human beings came into existence. Thus sound today, produced on unusual and improvised instruments, may excite in you the same emotions primitive drums and other crude instruments aroused in our ancestors.

“This sound, however, is apt to be confused in the minds of many with real music, which it is not,” states Julian Seaman, nationally known musical authority. “All music is based upon certain definite harmonic intervals—either diatonic harmony or more primitive systems. No matter what its primitive origin may be, real mu- sic must be adapted to some arbitrary system of sound as all music is artificial. The ordinary drum, for example, is not a music instrument while the tympani, commonly called the kettledrum, is a keyed instrument which produces tone.”

Musical saws, bazookas and other similar innovations are, according to Mr. Seaman, merely trick devices used to produce tone by extraneous means. Many other types of “instruments” such as musical washboards produce no tone but punctuate like a drum. Such punctuation, depending upon timing, or frequency of beats, say the psychologists, can appeal to our basic emotions just as a certain timing in the beating of a primitive log drum will whip African tribesmen into a fighting frenzy, while a different timing on an ordinary drum will make civilized men forget fatigue on long marches.

A great many of the recently improvised instruments have no special significance other than to show the ingenuity of the performer, scientists say. Others, however, may be the forerunners of new types of musical instruments or lead to the modernization of familiar, accepted instruments. An example of the former class is a weird instrument devised by a Los Angeles amateur who made use of a length of stovepipe with an elbow of the same material. It has an inset of corrugated sheet metal and a hose mouthpiece. Unusual tones are produced either by strumming on the corrugated metal or by blowing into the hose and the two methods, employed at the same time, give out sounds like the booming of a tom-tom and the piping of an oriental reed instrument.

Another ingenious device developed by a Spanish musician is a one-stringed instrument made of a pair of bellows with a handle in the shape of a violin. The string is connected with the needle and diaphragm taken from an ordinary phonograph. With a small horn at the top of the handle, the instrument, when played with a bow, sounds surprisingly like the voice of a soprano singer. Not all the improvised instruments fall into this freakish category, however. Lennard Hayton, well known musical conductor, believes experiments of this type in extracting “music” from everything may lead to modernizing musical instruments in an effort to reduce their clumsiness without detracting from their tonal value.

The first step in this direction, Mr. Hay-ton believes, is the streamline cello developed by Dr. Herman Fischer, noted acoustical authority. While the vio, as it is technically known, to unaccustomed eyes looks like a freak instrument, it has been designed along scientific lines. The large clumsy sound box has been replaced by a modern resonator, scarcely larger than a small cigar box, and one string does the work of four.

“Science has ignored completely musical instruments in developing our modern scientific marvels,” Mr. Hayton points out. “Most of our musical instruments have come down through the centuries with little or no improvements. The fiddle that Nero played when Rome burned was practically the violin we use today. I hope scientists will turn their efforts to music and let us musicians share the benefits which they have produced for other fields. They have succeeded in condensing the tonal value of a 110-piece orchestra into the narrow confines of a radio loudspeaker. Why can’t they reduce the size of the instruments themselves without loss of tone value?”

Thus while amateurs and professionals both are devising new methods whereby “music” may be extracted from everything, they are accomplishing more than merely amusing radio audiences. They have attracted the interest of modern science and focused attention on experiments which may result in new types of instruments and musical effects.

This Instrument Will Register Body Reactions of Student Piano Player

A NEW device has been patented by Dr. Kurt Johnen, Berlin piano pedagogue, which records the motions and bodily reactions of a piano player to determine if the selection is being properly interpreted. A lady is pictured being examined by the device. A pneumatic belt records the change of the circumference of the chest, pneumatic cuffs about the upper arms control the changes of muscle tension, through a hose is recorded the rhythms of respiration and another hose transfers the strength of touch. Dr. Johnen expects this device will aid him in instructing his pupils in interpretation.