Dingo40
Been here for ages!
Try sitting this on your lap (7 tons).
And you thought the accordion was complicated ?🤔😄
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Rosie C
Well-known member
Fascinating!
These organs are always very impressive!
I play in the accordion orchestra Accordeana in Helmond (the Netherlands) and for decades we had our rehearsals (and some concerts) in the "Gavioli zaal" which was a museum of mechanical organs.
Here we had a small party:
And here is the quintet ARTE in front of the largest organ:
The building was later demolished (to make way for more housing) and the organs were moved to a new location (where we no longer have our practice session and concerts).
I play in the accordion orchestra Accordeana in Helmond (the Netherlands) and for decades we had our rehearsals (and some concerts) in the "Gavioli zaal" which was a museum of mechanical organs.
Here we had a small party:
And here is the quintet ARTE in front of the largest organ:
The building was later demolished (to make way for more housing) and the organs were moved to a new location (where we no longer have our practice session and concerts).
Squeezebox Of Delights
Active member
Nick Williams (who made the video) also has another video demonstrating a large mechanical organ being controlled by a MIDI accordion. Fascinating stuff!
Thanks for posting that. Quite an interesting contraption (and video!). I saw and heard a similar one in operation once, maybe in New Orleans, maybe San Fran (things in my old brain are starting to run together!)
Being intimately familiar with player pianos I can see some similarities. The player piano is far simpler, playing just one instrument instead of many! The method of encoding the notes into heavy cardboard is interesting and somewhat similar, bulkier but appearing sturdier than the thin paper rolls used on player pianos.
A typical player piano, of course, runs entirely on foot-powered vacuum instead of positive air pressure, powering everything from the vacuum motor moving the paper roll, the note sensors, to the mechanical hammer strikers.
A problem with the thin, wide paper used on the player piano is keeping the roll aligned over the sensors since the paper can drift from side to side, and worse, when changes in humidity change the paper width, The technical ingenuity that solves that amazed me - dual vacuum sensors on either side of the sensing platen detect the paper position and dynamically shift the note-sensing platen as needed to correct for position drift, working regardless of changes in paper width - analog vacuum logic feeding a vacuum-powered adjustment mechanism. Blew my mind. That sensing mechanism, speed regulator, valves (essentially vacuum-powered amplifying switches), and hair-triggered strikers all built from wood, leather, a bit of metal, and lots of bellows cloth of various weights (I rebuilt 75 bellows in all, IIRC)
I read somewhere that player pianos were developed in the late 1800s, probably around the time the fairground organs were made. (And people today think we’re smart.) The piano I rebuilt was from 1930 or so.
The Fairground Organ shown certainly looks complicated! Wikipedia tells me some models actually incorporated accordions,
“relatively rare configurations with one or more accordions, whose keys could be seen to move”
JKJ
Being intimately familiar with player pianos I can see some similarities. The player piano is far simpler, playing just one instrument instead of many! The method of encoding the notes into heavy cardboard is interesting and somewhat similar, bulkier but appearing sturdier than the thin paper rolls used on player pianos.
A typical player piano, of course, runs entirely on foot-powered vacuum instead of positive air pressure, powering everything from the vacuum motor moving the paper roll, the note sensors, to the mechanical hammer strikers.
A problem with the thin, wide paper used on the player piano is keeping the roll aligned over the sensors since the paper can drift from side to side, and worse, when changes in humidity change the paper width, The technical ingenuity that solves that amazed me - dual vacuum sensors on either side of the sensing platen detect the paper position and dynamically shift the note-sensing platen as needed to correct for position drift, working regardless of changes in paper width - analog vacuum logic feeding a vacuum-powered adjustment mechanism. Blew my mind. That sensing mechanism, speed regulator, valves (essentially vacuum-powered amplifying switches), and hair-triggered strikers all built from wood, leather, a bit of metal, and lots of bellows cloth of various weights (I rebuilt 75 bellows in all, IIRC)
I read somewhere that player pianos were developed in the late 1800s, probably around the time the fairground organs were made. (And people today think we’re smart.) The piano I rebuilt was from 1930 or so.
The Fairground Organ shown certainly looks complicated! Wikipedia tells me some models actually incorporated accordions,
“relatively rare configurations with one or more accordions, whose keys could be seen to move”
JKJ
The Jacquard card mechanism is in theory capable of doing anything a modern computer can do, just a lot slower.
(you have to allow it to create cards too, which is possible)
Here's an image of Joseph-Marie Jacquard produced using 24,000 Jacquard cards in 1839
en.wikipedia.org
(you have to allow it to create cards too, which is possible)
Here's an image of Joseph-Marie Jacquard produced using 24,000 Jacquard cards in 1839
The Most Famous Image in the Early History of Computing : History of Information
The Most Famous Image in the Early History of Computing
historyofinformation.com
Joseph Marie Jacquard - Wikipedia
Rosie C
Well-known member
Javthedog
Active member
There was me thinking it was the monkey wot made it work!
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