The ‘Emicon’, Nicholas Langer & John Halmagyi , USA/Hungary, 1931.

The Emicon at the
The Emicon at the National Music Museum (Vermillion, South Dakota, USA)

The Emicon (Model S) – the name derived from that of the distributors, M.I. Conn in New York – was designed in Budapest, Hungary by electronics engineer Nicholas Langer and Hungarian instrument designer, John Halmágyi and later manufactured in the USA. The Emicon was a monophonic 32 note keyboard controlled instrument based on the same type of heterodyning vacuum tube oscillator technology first used in the  Thereminvox a decade earlier. Langer designed the instrument to be able to create more complex tones than the standard vacuum tube sine wave and therefore used a single neon gas-discharge tubes to produce a type of sawtooth wave with richer harmonics; “In general, pure sinusoidal  oscillations, when converted into sound, are not satisfactory from the musical  point of view as they impress us as empty and meaningless” – Langer’s Emicon was said to be able to produce tones similar to a cello, saxophone, oboe, trumpet, mandolin, guitar and bagpipe and was said to be the instrument that inspired Harald Bode to start designing electronic musical instruments. Designed as a portable domestic instrument, The Emicon was housed in a shallow rectangular case small enough to sit on a tabletop and could be attached directly to a domestic radio receiver, public address system, amplifier, or any similar equipment. 1 Davies, Hugh,(2014) The Emicon, Electronic valve Instruments, Grove Online, 08 December 2014.

“Charles D. Stein shows a model how to play the Emicon at the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas in June 1936.”
Langer's patent for the Emicon
Langer’s patent for the Emicon

The Emicon was manufactured and marketed by Emicon, Inc., Deep River, Connecticut, CA from 1932. A later portable travelling model was built into case with an amplifier in separate case similar to later instruments such as the Ondioline. A single example of the Emicon survives at the Charles D. Stein Collection of Early Electronic Instruments at the National Music Museum, Vermilion, South Dakota, USA. Langer moved from Hungary to the USA sometime in 1932 and continued to develop improved versions of the Emicon and filed numerous patents for electronic musical instruments until the 1950s.

Images of an Emicon sold at an auction April 2023:


References

  • 1
    Davies, Hugh,(2014) The Emicon, Electronic valve Instruments, Grove Online, 08 December 2014.

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