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Clocks and Mechanical Music

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Part of the book series:History of Mechanism and Machine Science ((HMMS,volume 50))

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Abstract

In the fifteenth century, spring-operated clocks appeared in Europe. Their mechanisms mainly used gears, but cams played a small but important role in the history of horology. The first application was in spring clocks called stackfreed, where a cam was used to maintain a constant driving torque exerted by the spring on the shaft of the clock hands. More sophisticated is the application of equation clocks, where a cam shaped to reproduce the equation of time is used according to the data provided by Huygens. The aim is to take into account the difference between the conventional twenty-four-hour day and the true solar day. The reciprocating motion that a cam imparts to the follower is similar to that of a player on certain musical instruments. This suggested replacing the human performer with small cams arranged on a cylinder. This idea is the basis of mechanical music. The cams used in mechanical instruments are also known as spikes, nails, needles, or pegs. The oldest instrument to use this system is the simple carillon. In pipe organs, cams are more complex because they must allow for notes of different durations. The orchestrion, fair organ, and barrel organ were effective in spreading music throughout the world. Musical boxes were another popular form of mechanical music.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Clockmakers took into account the actual length of the day when they used it to control and determine the correct length of a pendulum (Lepaute1767).

  2. 2.

    Here we do not distinguish between a carillon (more than 23 bells, covering at least two octaves) and a chime (from 8 to 22 bells).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Umberto Meneghetti

Authors
  1. Umberto Meneghetti

Appendix: The Mechanical Music

Appendix: The Mechanical Music

Mechanical music has existed since ancient times. It reached its zenith—in terms of the spread and complexity of the instruments—between the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. The world of mechanical music is vast and fascinating. Today it is practiced only by a few enthusiasts and has been replaced by much more effective means of reproduction, but in the past it played a non-negligible role in the dissemination of music.

In this chapter we have considered only the obvious derivation of the cylinders or drums from the camshafts used in industrial applications, which have been briefly illustrated in the previous chapters. Because of their simple shape and their small size, cams are usually called nails or needles or pins or tips in the field of mechanical music: but there is no doubt that they are, in all respects, cams.

It should be noted that the first automatic sound emitters used only hydraulics and pneumatics. The introduction of camshafts made it possible to create fully mechanical instruments, expanding their potential and versatility.

The technology used in mechanical music sometimes borders on that of watchmaking and is often mixed with that of automata, as in many fairground organs and orchestrions. These are true instrumental ensembles in which musical instruments and mechanical automata are often present at the same time. We will see some examples of the latter, also as musical performers, in the next chapter.

Many factors, such as the size of the drums of large pipe organs and carillons, the complexity and ingenuity of many of the mechanisms of orchestrions, the large number of important workshops and brilliant craftsmen dedicated to mechanical music, testify to its importance in the history of industry and technology. It is also probable that some industrial sectors, such as packaging machines, have benefited, when the time was right, from the solutions devised by some ingenious manufacturer of mechanical music devices. After all, one of the most brilliant creators of musical automata, Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–1782), is credited with many equally brilliant inventions in the industrial field, particularly in the textile industry.

It is therefore no exaggeration to consider mechanical musical instruments as worthy of consideration in the history of technology—at least on a par with clocks and watches—even if they are not routinely found there. In this chapter, therefore, we have at least mentioned, albeit briefly, those that use cams.

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Meneghetti, U. (2025). Clocks and Mechanical Music. In: A Brief History of Cams and Cam Mechanisms. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-81148-7_5

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