Sunday, January 19, 2020

The pipe organ is ancient. . .

From another web site:

The earliest known pipe organ, the hydraulis, invented in the third century BC, ingeniously used water to maintain the pressure in its wind chest. This animation illustrates the mechanism:



This reproduction instrument at Bath illustrates some of its potential for sound:



No wonder the Byzantine emperors used it in their court ceremonies. This German reconstruction sounds much more refined:



No wonder Mozart referred to the pipe organ as the King of Instruments and it has been acclaimed as the most complex engineering of man up to the modern era!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is there a diagram available showing how this works? The video is puzzling.

Fr.D+