Richard H. Dorf (b 14 Mar 1921; d New York, 21 June 1989) was an electronic engineer, prolific author on the subject of vacuum tube electronics and electronic organs, and the head of the Schober Organ Corporation – a supplier of self-build electronic organ kits (using patents licensed from Baldwin organ Co.).
In 1945 Dorf patented the Thyratone which was also supplied in kit form or simply as a circuit diagram and again, in terms of circuitry and filter formant construction, used a design inspired by Winston Kock’s Baldwin Organ .
The device was a simple, compact monophonic neon/thyratone vacuum tube instrument similar to the Hammond Solovox and Clavioline family of instruments i.e. designed as a conventional piano extension. The Thyratone was powered by a three octave keyboard with a single sawtooth oscillator for each octave and a series of filters and vibrato effects to colour the tone. The keyboard could be attached to the host-piano keyboard using metal brackets and connected to the Thyratone’s tone generator box, amplifier and loudspeaker via a cable.
Dorf designed as a miniature pipe organ, with familiar stop -based controls for timbre, pitch and vibrato (from another neon tube ‘LFO’); essentially preset setting for the tone filters and vibrato. A foot operated ‘expression pedal’ allowed the player control over the Thyratone’s output envelope.
Schober under Dorf’s supervision continued to develop electronic organ kits – starting in 1954 with valve based organs and moving to transistor organs in the mid 1960s – as well as various peripherals such as the Schober Tunesmith (1969), The Dynabeat drum machine (1968) and various tape echo units and stroboscopic tuning devices.
Schober Dynabeat drum synthesiser
The Dynabeat was an early solid state transistor based drum machine that was played via pads or a keyboard rather then the usual pre-set rhythms. Percussion sounds included:
Bass
Tom Tom
Woodblock LO
Woodblock HI
Cymbal Brush
Cymbal Crash
Bongo LO
Bongo HI
Snare Drum (when held down does a roll)
Castanets (when held down does a roll)
Schober Tunesmith
The tunesmith was basically the evolution of the Thyratone but equipped with solid state transistors rather than neon tubes.
Like the Thyratone, The Tunesmith was a monophonic 32 note portable mini-organ with a two and half octave range. The basic tone controls allowed the player to switch between different organ voices, trumpet, violin, cello, oboe and flute and modify the note with a variable speed vibrato.
Sources
Hugh Davies. The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 2nd edition, issue Published in print January 2001 | Published online February 2013 | e-ISBN: 9781561592630
‘Electronic Musical Instruments’ by Richard H. Dorf. New York : Radiofile, [1968]
‘Neon Organs’ by Richard H. Dorf . Electronics. p36 August 29, 1958
‘Electronics and Music’ Part IX-X by Richard H. Dorf. Radio Electronics. p39-68 March 1951.
The Baldwin organ was an electronic organ, many models of which have been manufactured by the Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. since 1946. The original models were designed by Dr Winston E. Kock who became the company’s director of electronic research after his return from his studies at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institute, Berlin, in 1936. The organ was a development of Kock’s Berlin research with the GrosstonOrgel using the same neon-gas discharge tubes to create a stable, affordable polyphonic instrument. The Baldwin Organ were based on an early type of subtractive synthesis; the neon discharge tubes generating a rough sawtooth wave rich in harmonics which was then modified by formant filters to the desired tone.
Another innovative aspect of the Baldwin Organ was the touch sensitive keyboard designed to create a realistic variable note attack similar to a pipe organ. As the key was depressed, a curved metal strip progressively shorted out a carbon resistance element to provide a gradual rather than sudden attack (and decay) to the sound. This feature was unique at that time, and it endowed the Baldwin instrument with an unusually elegant sound which captivated many musicians of the day.
“How did it sound? I have played Baldwin organs at a time when they were still marketed and in my opinion, for what it is worth, they were pretty good in relative terms. That is to say, they sounded significantly better on the whole than the general run of analogue organs by other manufacturers, and they were only beaten by a few custom built instruments in which cost was not a factor. It would not be true to say they sounded as good as a good digital organ today, but they compared favourably with the early Allen digitals in the 1970’s. Nor, of course, did they sound indistinguishable from a pipe organ, but that is true for all pipeless organs. To my ears they also sounded much better and more natural than the cloying tone of the more expensive Compton Electrone which, like the Hammond, also relied on attempts at additive synthesis with insufficient numbers of harmonics.”
From ‘Winston Kock and the Baldwin Organ; by Colin Pykett
Kock’s 1938 Patent of the Baldwin organ
Winston E. Kock Biographical Details:
Winston Kock was born into a German-American family in 1909 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Despite being a gifted musician he decided to study electrical engineering at Cincinnati university and in his 20’s designed a highly innovative, fully electronic organ for his master’s degree.
The major problem of instrument design during the 1920’s and 30’s was the stability and cost of analogue oscillators. Most commercial organ ventures had failed for this reason; a good example being Givelet & Coupleux’s huge valve Organ in 1930. it was this reason that Laurens Hammond (and many others) decided on Tone-Wheel technology for his Hammond Organs despite the inferior audio fidelity.
Kock had decided early on to investigate the possibility of producing a commercially viable instrument that was able to produce the complexity of tone possible from vacuum tubes. With this in mind, Kock hit upon the idea of using much cheaper neon ‘gas discharge’ tubes as oscillators stabilised with resonant circuits. This allowed him to design an affordable, stable and versatile organ.
In the 1930’s Kock, fluent in German, went to Berlin to study On an exchange fellowship (curiously, the exchange was with Sigismund von Braun, Wernher von Braun’s eldest brother –Kock was to collaborate with Wernher twenty five years later at NASA) at the Heinrich Hertz Institute conducting research for a doctorate under Professor K W Wagner. At the time Berlin, and specifically the Heinrich Hertz Institute, was the global centre of electronic music research. Fellow students and professors included; Jörg Mager, Oskar Vierling, Fritz Sennheiser, Bruno Helberger, Harald Bode, Friedrich Trautwein, Oskar Sala and Wolja Saraga amongst others. Kock’s study was based around two areas: – improving the understanding of glow discharge (neon) oscillators, and developing realistic organ tones using specially designed filter circuits.
Kock worked closely with Oskar Vierling for his Phd and co-designed the GrosstonOrgel in 1934 but disillusioned by the appropriation of his work by the newly ascendant Nazi party he decided to leave for India, sponsored by the Baldwin Organ Company arriving at the Indian Institute of Music in Bangalore in 1935.
Returning from India in 1936, Dr Kock became Baldwin’s Director of Research while still in his mid-twenties, and with J F Jordan designed many aspects of their first electronic organ system which was patented in 1941.
When the USA entered the second world war Kock moved to Bell Telephone Laboratories where he was involved on radar research and specifically microwave antennas. In the mid-1950’s he took a senior position in the Bendix Corporation which was active in underwater defence technology. He moved again to become NASA’s first Director of Engineering Research, returning to Bendix in 1966 where he remained until 1971 when he became Acting Director of the Hermann Schneider Laboratory of the University of Cincinatti. Kock Died in Cincinatti in 1982.
Winston Kock was a prolific writer of scientific books but he also wrote fiction novels under the pen name of Wayne Kirk.
Sources:
Hugh Davies. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Wolja Saraga was a research doctoral student and then lecturer from around 1929 until 1936 at the newly formed (1928) Heinrich-Hertz Institut Für Schwingungsforschung (Heinrich hertz Institute for Frequency Research or HHI for short) based on Franklin Str 1, Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany. The HHI was tasked with research into all forms of frequency research – communications, radio, physics, acoustics and electronic musical instruments. Under the direction of Prof Gustav Leithäuser the HHI became the international center for the development of electronic musical instruments through the work of figures such as Fritz Sennheiser, Oskar Vierling , Harald Bode , Winston Kock , Friedrich Trautwein and Wolja Saraga.
In 1932 Saraga began to investigate the opportunities and practicalities of musical sound production via three main approaches: optical sound synthesis, direct sound generation through ‘direct discharge’ and by using a voltage controlled tungsten arc-lamp.1Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55,99, 100, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives. The name Saraga-Generator has has become used for his more well-known photo-electrical instrument but probably applies better to his ‘direct discharge’ instrument that used a high voltage power generator to create spark-gap transmissions of sound waves. In this text it applies to all of his electronic musical experiments.
The Direkte elektrische Schallerzeugung or Direct Electrical Generator created a musical tone through direct stimulation of the air without loudspeakers – a method similar to Simon and Duddel’s early Singing Arc experiments of 1899. The result would have been at quite a high volume or, as Saraga put it “The desired kinetic effect is not negligible”. 2Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55, 25 Jan 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives. The technique is explained in Saturday Review (1952): “The effect takes advantage of several physical principles:[5] First, ionization of a gas creates a highly conductive plasma, which responds to alternating electric and magnetic fields. Second, this low-density plasma has a negligibly small mass. Thus, the air remains mechanically coupled with the essentially massless plasma, allowing it to radiate a nearly ideal reproduction of the sound source when the electric or magnetic field is modulated with the audio signal.” 3 Villchur, Edgar, (1952) A New Speaker Principle, Saturday Review, 1952 Sep 27, 60-61.
Writing in Funkbastler Magazine, Saraga describes the sound of the instrument:
“The high-frequency glow arc also works with low background noise. Sometimes the presence of the counter electrode is also the cause of disturbing side effects. The air between the plates can oscillate itself and the acoustic change circumstances. Special forms of the counter electrode will probably prove to be particularly favourable. If you listen to the performances of the peak discharge, you will particularly notice the good reproduction of the high frequencies; the hissing sounds are very natural. The favourable acoustic radiation of the lower frequencies seems to be much more difficult, as the reproduction generally sounds a bit thin.“4Saraga, Wolja, (1930) Schallerzeugung durch Hochfrequenzentladungen, Funkbastler, Heft 24, 409-10.
Saraga probably abandoned research in direct transmission for this reason – the low frequency reproduction was poor and because of the impracticalities of the approach: the amount of energy required and potentially hazardous by products produced by the ionisation process.
The second approach Musikinstrument mit Wolframbogenlampe or Music Instrument with Wolfram Bow Lamp used used a tungsten arc-lamp connected to a loudspeaker without an amplifier which produced “very high volumes”. The tone of the lamp was modulated using a resistance manual; probably a metal strip touched by the player. 5Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 100, 13th September 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.
Saraga’s photo-electrically controlled instrument the Elektrisches Photozellenmusikinstrument described in his 1932 HHI report, was a monophonic device that consisted of an audio oscillator controlled by movements of the performer’s hand between a low voltage neon lamp and a narrow V-shaped slit in the lid of a box. The white painted interior of the box had a photocell mounted on it positioned so that direct light would not reach it. The range of the instrument was about four octaves. Articulation and loudness were controlled by a switch, held in the performer’s other hand, and a volume pedal. 6Davies, Hugh (1984), Saraga-Generator, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 383. Saraga’s photo-cell instrument was patented in 1932 and demonstrated at the Berlin Radio Exhibition (IFA – Internationale Funkaustellung, Berlin) alongside the Orchester der Zukunft (the all-electric Orchestra of the Future) in the same year. Saraga described the timbral quality of the basic instrument as poor but one that could be easily rectified using the same type of format filters as Trautwein’s Trautonium. 7Saraga, Wolja, (1932) Ein Neues Elektrisches MusikInstrument, Funkbastler, Heft 10, 433-5.
Saraga escaped Germany in 1936 (Bringing with him a Volkstrautoniumpurchased as a promotional model from Telefunken – which was confiscated by German authorities at the border) and eventually found employment in Orpington, Kent, UK. 8Interview with Esther Saraga, London 2015 In May 1946, Saraga founded the Electronic Music Group at the Northern Polytechnic (Holloway Rd, London) and tried to renew interest in his photo-electric instrument with public demonstrations of its capabilities and searched for commercial applications for the instrument including film soundtrack music and musical therapy for blind war veterans.
Saraga describes his instrument in an article in the Electronic Engineering journal, July 1945:
“A photo-electric cell is used as playing manual for controlling the pitch, the amount of light falling on this cell determining the frequency of the oscillation produced.* Thus the player can play on this instrument by varying the amount of light falling on the cell by moving his hand be- tween the cell and a source of light. This playing technique is in some aspects similar to that employed in Theremin’s instrument ; but there are some important differences which will be discussed, and it is hoped that the new playing technique will provide players and composers with new, hitherto unknown or technically im- possible, methods of expression.
The loudness of the tone produced can be controlled by means of a pedal which actuates a variable resistance or potentiometer. In a more elaborate form of the instrument it is intended to control the loudness by varying the amount of light falling on a second photo -electric cell. It is expected that this method of loudness control will be useful also in connection with other electronic musical instruments. For starting and stopping the tone the player uses a switch held in one hand which opens or closes the loud- speaker circuit. This switch is necessary because the loudness control by means of a pedal is rather slow. Instead of using a switch the player can close the- loudspeaker circuit by touching two metal contacts with his hand as a conducting link.” 9Saraga, W, (1945), An Electronic .Musical Instrument With a Photo -Electric Cell as Playing Manual, Electronic Engineering, 601.
Saraga argued that his instrument was superior to Termen’s Thereminvoxin that it was easier and more natural to play:
“practical experience with Theremin’s instrument shows that its playing technique, while relieving the player from the resistance and inertia of the instrument, increases the resistance and inertia of his own hand because the hand has to be moved freely in the air for long periods with- out any physical support and without any visible indication of the correct positioning of the hand. Moreover, the pitch produced depends not only on the position of the hand but, to a smaller degree, also on the position of the whole body. Furthermore, the character of the electrostatic field of the rod in which the player moves his hand is such that it is very difficult to produce a linear pitch scale, i.e., to make the pitch proportional to the distance of the hand from the rod. The object of the new instrument […] is to eliminate these disadvantages of Theremin’s instrument. For this purpose the use of a photoelectric cell as -playing manual for determining the pitch or the loudness of the musical tones seems to be particularly convenient, because the geometrical relations of light beams’ and light and shadow which determine the amount of light falling on the cell when the hand of the player is in a certain position are much simpler, and much easier to control, than the geometrical relations of electrostatic fields which determine the hand capacitance in a certain position of the hand.“10Saraga, W, (1945), An Electronic .Musical Instrument With a Photo -Electric Cell as Playing Manual, Electronic Engineering, 601.
Wolja Saraga: Biographical Notes
Wolja Saraga was a German Jewish Physicist, born in Berlin, Germany on 03-09-1908 to a Romanian father and a Russian mother. He studied telecommunications at the Heinrich Hertz Institute (Heinrich-Hertz Institut Für Schwingungsforschung or ‘HHI’) at the Technical University, Berlin under Prof Gustav Leithäuser. Saraga became a research assistant at the HHI and later a lecturer from 1929-1933. He also studied physics and mathematics at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he was awarded a Dr. phil. in physics in 1935.
During his time in Berlin, Saraga was very energetic in promoting the potential of electronic music; He wrote numerous articles for journals and magazines on the subject of acoustics and audio technology and made several public presentations and demonstrations of electronic instruments including Theremins, Trautoniumsand his own Saraga Generator. Saraga was also present playing the Saraga Generator at the 1932/3 International Funkaustellung (IFA) where the first ever electronic musical orchestra performed – Das Orchester der Zukunft.
It became clear to Saraga in 1935-6 that as a Jewish scientist he would have no future in the new National Socialist German Reich and began to apply to leave the country, first of all to Switzerland and then to the UK. Saraga finally left Berlin in 1938 at the age of 29. he was initially held for six months on the Isle Of Man Hutchinson Camp as a German internee but was given a position working for the Telephone Manufacturing Company (or ‘TMC’) in St Mary’s Cray, Kent where, despite his unhappiness at his employers lack of interest in research, he remained until 1958.
Saraga then joined The Associated Electrical Industries Research Laboratory in Blackheath, London as a Research Scientist and Group Leader where he specialised in telephony filter design. In 1962, Saraga’s key contributions were recognised by the award of the Fellowship of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, ‘for contributions to network theory and its application in communications’. In 1972, Saraga moved full time to Imperial College, London where he became a postgraduate lecturer and researcher in network theory and mathematics and wrote a number of books and filed several patents on network theory and telephony. Wolja Saraga died in London on Feb 15 1980.11Scanla, J,O,(1980) Obituary of Wolja Saraga, CIRCUIT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS, VOL. 8, 341. , 12 (1980) Obituary of Wolja Saraga, IEEPROC, Vol. 128, Pt. G, No. 4, AUGUST 1981.13 Crab, Simon, (2015) Interview with Esther Saraga, london 2015.
References:
1
Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55,99, 100, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.
2
Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55, 25 Jan 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.
3
Villchur, Edgar, (1952) A New Speaker Principle, Saturday Review, 1952 Sep 27, 60-61.
4
Saraga, Wolja, (1930) Schallerzeugung durch Hochfrequenzentladungen, Funkbastler, Heft 24, 409-10.
5
Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 100, 13th September 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.
6
Davies, Hugh (1984), Saraga-Generator, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 383.
Oskar Vierling was an important figure in the development of electronic musical instruments and electro-acoustic instruments during the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Vierling was a trained electronic engineer who, after studying at the Ohm Polytechnic, Nuremberg filed over 200 patents. In 1935 Vierling moved to Berlin where he received his doctorate in physics at the Technical University and then continued to work at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institute of Vibration Research (HHI) under Fritz Sennheiser.
The Electrochord
Vierling’s first musical instrument was the ‘Electochord’ an electro-acoustic piano designed and built in collaboration with Benjamin Franklin Mießner and was commercially marketed by August Förster Piano Factory in Lõbau. The Elechtrochord worked by converting resonating piano strings via electro-magnets into electronic sounds in a similar way to Vierling’s Neo-Bechstien Piano (an early electro-acoustic piano designed by Vierling and Walther Nernst in 1931).
The vibrations from a normal piano string were recorded and amplified electronically. Various register circuits enabled the player to change the sound’s timbre ranging from “a delicate Spinettte, the lyrical tone of a parlour organ to the powerful sound emission of a grand piano”. A restored model of the Electrochord is kept in the music collection of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. During the early 1930’s Vierling worked closely with Jorg Mager at his Darmstadt research centre on the construction of Klaviatursphäraphon amongst other instruments.
The ‘Kraft Durche Freude Grosstonorgel’
Vierling went on to develop another large electronic organ; the ‘Grosstonorgel’ (together with Karl Willy Wagner and the American engineer Winston E. Kock both at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institute. Winston Kock came to Berlin in 1933 as an exchange student at the Technical University of Berlin where he built an electronic organ for his diploma thesis. Since vacuum tubes were very expensive, he designed an instrument that relied instead on the smaller and cheaper neon tubes for the oscillators . He filed a patent for a use of inductive neon oscillators and sound-colour generation. It’s likely that the Grosstonorgel used similar neon or vacuum tube technology.
Work on the Grosstonorgel was funded by the National Socialist ‘Kraft Durche Freude’ cultural association (‘Strength Through Joy’ Set up as a tool to promote the advantages of National Socialism to the people,which became the world’s largest tourism operator of the 1930s) . The Grosstonorgel, as well as a Vierling designed 500 watt PA system, was a one-off instrument specifically designed to provide the musical accompaniment to the 1936 Olympic Games. A year later the instrument was also used at the Reich Party Congress of the National Socialist Party in Nuremberg. The new improved model was said to be able to produce “beautiful bell sounds” to accompany the Nazi propaganda spectacle.
Vierling had joined the National Socialist Party (NDSAP) in the late 1930s and in 1941 established the Vierling research group with a staff of 200 employees co-operating directly with the Wermacht high command. The secret research establishment was located in Burg Feuerstein, Ebermannstadt disguised as a hospital with red-cross emblems on the roof to avoid allied bombing.
Research included audio-controlled torpedoes (codenamed “wren” and “vulture” where the torpedoes located their target from the propeller noises of enemy ships ), encryption technology (with Erich Hüttenhain and Erich Fellgiebel on a voice encryption method of the legendary SZ 42 cipher ), anti radar submarine coating (codenamed “chimney sweep”) as well as radio control equipment and electronic calculators. The Vierling company still exists as a family run business in Ebermannstadt.
After the fall of Nazi Germany the Burg Feuerstein castle was sealed-off by the British troops. Vierling revealed his previously secret work which he had hidden in secret walled off chambers in the castle and collaborated openly with the new occupiers:
“Another major opportunity arose in the capture of the Feuerstein Laboratory on a small mountain near Ebermannstadt, which conducted research and preliminary development of experimental communications equipment. Its director Dr. Oskar Vierling, was picked up and interrogated. He proved cooperative, reassembled most of his staff and put them back to work, allowing TICOM to exploit the target.”
Report from TICOM Team 1.
TICOM (SIGINT) documents detailing Oskar Vierling. 1945
TICOM (SIGINT) documents detailing Oskar Vierling. 1945
At this time Vierling met the British mathematician and the ‘Father of Computing’ Alan Turing (then working for TICOM ; Target Intelligence Committee), to discuss details of encryption and specifically the Enigma machine and Vierlings work on encrypted radio transmissions. Vierling then worked at Gehlen Organisation (an American run espionage organisation employing hundred of ex-Nazis ) on the design of bugging devices for the American occupation (echoing the career trajectory of Lev Termen) and from 1949 to 1955, having escaped the De-Nazification process through his collaboration with the occupying powers, became professor of physics at the Philosophical-Theological College in Bamberg, Germany. Vierling continued working at Vierling AG in Ebermannstadt and died in 1986.
Kock and Vierling in Berlin
Excerpt from Hans-Joachim Braun’s ‘Music Engineers. The Remarkable Career of Winston E. Kock, Electronic Organ Designer and NASA Chief of Electronics’
“In the spring of 1933, after finishing his studies in Cincinnati, Kock became exchange fellow at the Technical University of Berlin. He had heard of Karl Willy Wagner’s work and wanted to conduct doctoral research with him at the Heinrich Hertz Institute. Kock’s counterpart as an exchange student from Berlin to Cincinnati was Sigismund von Braun, Wernher von Braun’s eldest brother. In Berlin Kock wrote a Ph. D. thesis on oscillations in inductive glow discharge circuits and, with Oskar Vierling, another student of Wagner’s, designed an improved electronic organ on the formant principle. Oskar Vierling, Kock’s collaborator on the Kock-Vierling organ, had studied electrical engineering at an engineering school and in 1925 joined the Laboratory of the German Research Institute for Telegraphy headed by Karl Willy Wagner. In 1928 he followed Wagner as his assistant to the newly founded ‘Institute for Vibration Research’ conducting acoustic research and designing electrified pianos and electronic organs. Together with the Nobel Laureate Walter Nernst he in 1931 designed the Neo-Bechstein piano, an electrostatic piano and from 1928 to 1935 developed his Electrochord for the piano manufacturer Förster. The National Socialist Strength through Joy organization sponsored Vierling’s ‘Strength through Joy Organ’ which was played at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. This enlarged and improved version of the Kock-Vierling model created a sensation as did his electrically generated bell sounds which he presented at the National Socialist Party Rally in Nuremberg a year later.8 Fascination by technology, electricity and electronics,surprising effects, glorious sounds, this was food for the masses and much appreciated by the party propagandists. Vierling’s mentor Karl Willy Wagner must have watched his former assistant’s success with very mixed feelings, having himself been forced to resign from his directorate of the Heinrich Hertz Institute in 1936. There is an irony in the fact that Kock,who played a significant role in the US War effort during World War II, contributed, although unintentionally, to enhancing Nazi propaganda efforts.”
Sources
Peter Donhauser ‘THE FIRST ELECTRO-ACOUSTICAL PIANO IN GERMANY. THE NEO-BECHSTEIN AND IT’S RESTORATION’ Vienna Museum of Technology
Mariahilfer Strasse 212, 1140 Vienna
Hans-Joachim Braun ‘Music Engineers. The Remarkable Career of Winston E. Kock, Electronic Organ Designer and NASA Chief of Electronics’
‘Tarnname Schornsteinfeger’ by Thadeusz, Frank ‘Was wurde im Geheimlabor der Nazis auf Burg Feuerstein erforscht? Der Erfinder Oskar Vierling soll dort akustische Leitsysteme für die Wehrmacht entwickelt haben.’ Der Spiegel 18.04.2011
Wolfgang Voigt: Oskar Vierling, ein Wegbereiter der Elektroakustik für den Musikinstrumentenbau, in: Das Musikinstrument vol. 37, Nr 1/2, 1988, 214-221 und Nr. 2/3, 172-176.