Signedstamped on keyboard top: RUDOLPH KOENIG / À PARIS
FunctionTen electromagnetically-driven tuning forks are each pared with a brass resonator tuned to the same frequency. The tuning forks vibrate continuously, but produce little sound. Pressing one of the ivory keys on a piano-type keyboard, however, engages a string that pulls a shutter-type stop away from the opening of the resonator. This causes that resonator to produce a louder sound. The relative strength of the harmonic frequency is adjusted by the amount that the user pushed the key down. By activating combinations of resonators, the experimenter could synthesize different sounds. The goal was to see how various combinations produce different timbres.
Historical AttributesThis is Rudolph Koenig's version of "Helmholtz's large apparatus for compounding timbres of 10 harmonics." It sold for 1500 francs in the Koenig catalogue of 1889.
Primary SourcesRudolph Koenig, Catalogue des Appareils d'Acoustique (Paris, 1865), 11.
Rudolph Koenig, Catalogue des Appareils d'Acoustique (Paris, 1889), 26.
Related WorksDavid Pantalony, Rudolph Koening (1832-1901), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and the Birth of Modern Acoutsics, unpublished dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002.
David Pantalony, "Rudolph Koenig's Workshop of Sound: Instruments, Theories, and the Debate over Combination Tones," Annals of Science 62 (2005): 57-82.
Thomas Greenslade, "The Acoustical Apparatus of Rudolph Koenig," The Physics Teacher, 30 (December, 1992).