Philosophy
- False Needs, Technological Regress, And The Mechanical Pencil
As I wasted a perfectly good hour of vacation fixing the shorter of the short people's mechanical pencil -- a stocking stuffer he asked for and received -- Marx's notion of false needs came to mind, that is, the idea that in order to sell more...
- Bullshit Or Not: Beethoven Edition
There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, In Search Of... called, Bullshit or Not? with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that...
- Jacob Perkins..."penny Black"
Jacob Perkins July 9th, 1766 to July 30th, 1849 Jacob Perkins "...was an Anglo-American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist." And he is best know for his association with the world's first postage stamp... Penny Black 1840 Engraved by Charles...
- "scientific American"...first Issue
And even older than Physics World [previous post] is the first issue of Scientific American. Scientific American is a "monthly magazine interpreting scientific developments to lay readers. It was founded in 1845 as a newspaper describing new inventions....
- Beethoven...plumbic Poisoning?
Fascinating story about Beethoven, a fellow named Ferdinand Hiller, and 582 strands of Beethoven's head hair purloined the day after Beethoven died known as the "Guevara Lock", and the Argonne National Laboratory. The event took place in 1827...the...
Philosophy
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel's mechanical orchestras
Composer's Datebook...
Maelzel's Mechanical Wonders
On today's date in 1838, the crew of the American brig Otis, docked in the harbor of La Guiara, Venezuela, was about to set sail for Philadelphia, when they discovered that one of their passengers had died in his cabin. He was the German inventor and one-time business associate of Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel.
Maelzel was born in Regensburg in 1772, the son of an organ builder. Perhaps a childhood spent among the inner workings of pipe organs predisposed young Johann to become an inventor of mechanical instruments, similar to this old Viennese flute clock. At the age of 20, Maelzel came to Vienna, and if you had 3000 florins of disposable income, you could buy one of Maelzel's mechanical wonders and hear it play short tunes by Haydn and Mozart on demand.
But Maezel didn't stop there: he invented entire mechanical orchestras, and other wonders, all to be displayed in a museum he opened in Vienna in 1812. Beethoven composed a piece for Maelzel's mechanical orchestra entitled "Wellington's Victory." The two collaborators fell out over who owned what, and in any case, Beethoven re-orchestrated his piece for conventional, human performers. Maelzel took his contraptions on tour, and spent a good deal of his later life exhibiting them in the United States and even the West Indies.
Today, Maelzel's musical inventions are regarded as obsolete curios -- with one exception: he's credited with finessing and popularizing the use of the metronome.
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel [Wikipedia]
metronome [Wikipedia]
Maelzel's Mechanical Wonders
On today's date in 1838, the crew of the American brig Otis, docked in the harbor of La Guiara, Venezuela, was about to set sail for Philadelphia, when they discovered that one of their passengers had died in his cabin. He was the German inventor and one-time business associate of Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel.
Maelzel was born in Regensburg in 1772, the son of an organ builder. Perhaps a childhood spent among the inner workings of pipe organs predisposed young Johann to become an inventor of mechanical instruments, similar to this old Viennese flute clock. At the age of 20, Maelzel came to Vienna, and if you had 3000 florins of disposable income, you could buy one of Maelzel's mechanical wonders and hear it play short tunes by Haydn and Mozart on demand.
But Maezel didn't stop there: he invented entire mechanical orchestras, and other wonders, all to be displayed in a museum he opened in Vienna in 1812. Beethoven composed a piece for Maelzel's mechanical orchestra entitled "Wellington's Victory." The two collaborators fell out over who owned what, and in any case, Beethoven re-orchestrated his piece for conventional, human performers. Maelzel took his contraptions on tour, and spent a good deal of his later life exhibiting them in the United States and even the West Indies.
Today, Maelzel's musical inventions are regarded as obsolete curios -- with one exception: he's credited with finessing and popularizing the use of the metronome.
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel [Wikipedia]
metronome [Wikipedia]
- False Needs, Technological Regress, And The Mechanical Pencil
As I wasted a perfectly good hour of vacation fixing the shorter of the short people's mechanical pencil -- a stocking stuffer he asked for and received -- Marx's notion of false needs came to mind, that is, the idea that in order to sell more...
- Bullshit Or Not: Beethoven Edition
There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, In Search Of... called, Bullshit or Not? with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that...
- Jacob Perkins..."penny Black"
Jacob Perkins July 9th, 1766 to July 30th, 1849 Jacob Perkins "...was an Anglo-American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist." And he is best know for his association with the world's first postage stamp... Penny Black 1840 Engraved by Charles...
- "scientific American"...first Issue
And even older than Physics World [previous post] is the first issue of Scientific American. Scientific American is a "monthly magazine interpreting scientific developments to lay readers. It was founded in 1845 as a newspaper describing new inventions....
- Beethoven...plumbic Poisoning?
Fascinating story about Beethoven, a fellow named Ferdinand Hiller, and 582 strands of Beethoven's head hair purloined the day after Beethoven died known as the "Guevara Lock", and the Argonne National Laboratory. The event took place in 1827...the...