The ‘Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones’, Arnold Lesti, Leo Tiedemann, USA, 1931.

Lesti (L) and Tiedemann’s (R)  Trillion Tone Organ of 1931. Image: Radio Craft, January 1931.

The Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones (1931)

The Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones was created and developed by the Italian born electronic engineer Arnold Lesti and US inventor, F. Sammis in Hollywood, USA around 1931. The Radio Organ used a similar photo-electrical technique as the Celluphone, Superpiano and other variants and in Lesti’s later instruments – The Polytone (1934) and Singing Keyboard (1936) the  designed with Frederick Sammis at RCA’s Phototone studios in Hollywood. 1Lesti, Arnold,(1931)Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones, radio Craft, january 1931, 402-3, 430.The The Radio Organ. however used a technique to generate more complex timbres than it’s rivals by projecting the light beam through two sets of glass disks – a ‘Pitch disk’ generating a pitched fundamental plus it’s ascending harmonics and a Timbre disk modifying the tone using a drawn representation of the sound wave of a real instrument (horn, violin, clarinet, oboe and a human voice).  The principle was improved in Lesti and Sammis’ development of the Trillion Tone Organ called the Polytone. 2 Davies, Hugh, (2014), Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 216.
Radio Craft Magazine’s impression of the Trillion Tone Organ. Image: Radio Craft, January 1931.
Diagram of the photo-electrical technique of the Trillion Tone Organ. Image: Radio Craft, January 1931.

References:

  • 1
    Lesti, Arnold,(1931)Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones, radio Craft, january 1931, 402-3, 430.
  • 2
    Davies, Hugh, (2014), Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 216.

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