YouTube via audiolemon. via Nusonica.
"It was 1906. "Get Music on Tap Like Gas or Water" promised the headlines, and soon the public was enchanted with inventor Thaddeus Cahill's (1867-1934) electrical music by wire.
The Telharmonium was a 200-ton behemoth that created numerous musical timbres and could flood many rooms with sound.
Beginning with the first instrument, constructed in the 1890's, and continuing with the installation of the second instrument at Telharmonic Hall in New York, the rise and fall of commercial service, the attempted comeback of the third Telharmonium, and ending with efforts to find a home for the only surviving instrument in 1951, this documentary provides a definitive account of the first comprehensive music synthesizer.
You can get a full DVD of this documentary: [link to DVD on Amazon
]This clip was reposted from [link] with the permission of Reynold Weidenaar."
It's a real shame that neither the Telharmonium nor any recordings of it survived. However, it's worth noting that the Hammond organ is basically a miniature version. So that give us some clue of what it might have sounded like. I didn't know that the Telharmonium was capable of just intonation -- that must have been a real handful to control!
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