The ‘Synthetic Tone’, Sewall Cabot, USA, 1918

Patent documents of Cabot's Synthetic Tone Instrument
Patent documents of Cabot’s Synthetic Tone Instrument. Image United States Patent office.

The ‘Synthetic Tone’ was an electro-mechanical instrument similar but much smaller to the Choralcelo designed by the Brookline, Massachusetts electrical engineer Sewall Cabot. The instrument created complex tones by resonating metal bars with a tone-wheel generated electromagnetic charge.1Roads, Curtis,(1996) Early Electronic Music Instruments: Time Line 1899-1950, Computer Music Journal Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), MIT Press, 20-23.

“One object of my present invention is to provide an improved musical instrument of relatively small cost and small dimensions in comparison to those of a pipe-organ, but capable of attaining all the musically useful results of which a pipe-organ is capable. Another object is to provide an instrument that will produce desirable tonal effects not heretofore obtainable from a pipe-organ.”2 United States Patent Office,#1705395

Sewall Cabot was a U.S. electrical engineer and an early (1906) contributor to the development of vacuum tube detectors before lee de Forest’s ‘Audion’ patent of 1912. 3 Cabot, Sewall, (1927) Detection—Grid or Plate, QST 1927-03: Vol 11 Iss 3, 30 Cabot was responsible for the later (1916) re-design of the Choralcelo electronic instrument.


References:

  • 1
    Roads, Curtis,(1996) Early Electronic Music Instruments: Time Line 1899-1950, Computer Music Journal Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), MIT Press, 20-23.
  • 2
    United States Patent Office,#1705395
  • 3
    Cabot, Sewall, (1927) Detection—Grid or Plate, QST 1927-03: Vol 11 Iss 3, 30

 

2 thoughts on “The ‘Synthetic Tone’, Sewall Cabot, USA, 1918”

  1. I think that you have the wrong Sewall Cabot. Quincy Sewall Cabot, 1901-1957 was a member of the US Diplomatic Service and went by the name Quincy Sewall.
    Sewall Cabot 1875-1938 was an electrical engineer who patented several items.

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