A 100-Year-Old Electronic Musical Instrument Brought Back to Life
1 min read
Summary
In the early 20th century, the Luminaphone was among the first musical instruments to use electricity rather than physical or mechanical elements to generate sound.
It consisted of a rotating disc with holes through which light from bulbs shone, controlled by a keyboard, hitting a selenium cell and producing sound from varying light intensity.
The instrument was invented by Harry Grindell Matthews, who also used selenium in another invention, an early form of X-ray machine, which was eventually found to be dangerously inadequate.
Now, a hack by Nick Bild has reproduced the Luminaphone’s sound using a laser diode instead of a rotating disc, showing that it produced an idiosyncratic sound likely to be very different from modern electronic instruments.
However, as there are no recordings or original Luminaphones, it is impossible to know precisely how it sounded.
