AUDITORY PERSPECTIVE

CD 1967019 E&MP45.008

Electrostatic Amplification - Music

no date

R.J. Tillman of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, left, and A.R. Soffel of Bell Telephone Laboratories, right, at the voltage amplifiers in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.



additional text related to this photograph...

Dr. Leopold Stokowski, always [sic] intested in the technical features of music transmission, adjusts the gain of an amplifier while Dr. Harvey Fletcher looks on.

R.J. Tillman of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, left, and A.R. Soffel of Bell Telephone Laboratories, right at the voltage amplifiers in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.

D.T. Bell of Bell Telephone Laboratories, at the power amplifiers in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.

Dr. F.P. Jewett, Vice President of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, who described of orchestral transmission to the National Academy of Sciences today, inspects a new kind of loud speaker [sic] diaphram under the guidance of Dr. Harvey Fletcher, of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Violin tones have been given a remarkable mellowness and sonorousness by an amplifying device which captures the pulsations of electrons inside the resonating chamber. The tones are more than twenty times as loud as standard instruments but are not distorted in quality. Harry A. Yeilder, electrical engineer, is shown with one of the new electrically-toned violins.

Detail of the amplifying unit, showing the loud-speaker arrangement which produces the tones dynamically. It is a four-tube affair.

A cut-away cello shows the simple mechanism inside the resonating chamber. The box underneath the bridge activates the electrons, which are picked up electrically and magnified more than twenty times by the [sic] amplifyer unit without distortion. Peter Kleynberg, tone expert, is [sic] fist celloist with the Grand Rapids [sic] Syphony Orchestra. 

Original Caption by Science Service
^©Bell Telephone Laboratories