So I'm riding home down US33 from Columbus the other night and
inadvertently tune to the classical station.  There was Carl Haas
explaining how Beethoven's 'Wellington's Victory' was written for
Maelzel's "contraption," a.k.a. the Panharmonicon.

Now, I know we've discussed this instrument here a bit -- the
discussion comes up in a Google search -- but I have a few questions:

Has anybody re-created Maelzel's Panharmonicon?  It's supposed to be
sort of a music box with peripherals like a drum and a trumpet.

I can understand how you could make a mechanical piano or violin or
organ, but how the heck do you make a mechanical trumpet?  If asked to
design one, I'd use a rank of trumpet-sounding organ pipes, but I get
the impression that in Maelzel's instrument there were, like, fake lips
(eew!) that vibrated to make the sounds.  How did that work?

Maelzel was apparently quite an operator.  He either invented or swiped
the ear trumpet (Beethoven bought one or more,) the metronome, the
aforementioned Panharmonicon, and apparently had significant involvement
in that great achievement of 19th-century robotics, the Chess-Playing
Turk.  But I can't find much about him or his inventions except for The
Turk.

Mark Kinsler

 [ Relevant MMD articles are indexed at
 [   http://mmd.foxtail.com/archives/KWIC/M/maelzel.html
 [   http://mmd.foxtail.com/archives/KWIC/M/maelzel_s.html
 [ -- Robbie