I'm getting in here really late, like 10 years late, but I just happened to bump into this tonight and I was astounded. I really thought I'd seen it all in the line of High Fidelity, but this Air powered Amp just blew me away! Hmm, I wonder if this invention ever evolved to the point of Stereo Implementation? If so I wonder if they had to use 2 separate air pumps to achieve a good Signal to noise ratio, or if a simple 1 to 2 "Y" connector adapter would work without objectionable Cross-Talk? And this baby is Expensive! 500 bucks in 1906 is around $13,500.00 today. Not a bad price to pay though for a Major piece of Audiophile history... Thanks for posting that Rene.
Believe it or not, this is not the only model and they were made for cylinder records as well, though they weren't for outdoor use and were quieter. There is a video on youtube of a cylinder record being played by such a machine and the fidelity is excellent for what it is.
What a splendid demonstration of a beautiful device. Presumably the compressed air can generate the sound compressions but not the rarefactions. So, technically, we are hearing a half-wave rectified version of the audio signal in the groove. Nevertheless, it works amazingly well; and was elegantly packaged by Victor.
This came from the legendary EMI collection in London, auctioned in 1980 by Sotheby's. It had been in storage in their collection for at least 50 years by then. The phonographs on the mantle were indeed made by Stollwerck chocolate co,. both the 1903 and 1904 versions.
What happens when you play a 1920's eletrically recorded record? I bet you really get some amplification! It's a beautiful machine. I wonder how many are still in existence?
Wonderful old technology, it worked well for the era. No doubt could be used for public dances and so on. Thanks, I'll pass long to some audiophiles. I had no idea that air could amplify sound.
the rene rondeau????!!!! the famous phonograph collector? this is amazing. oh yes and thank u so much for assisting me in my "vinyl amplifying" problems through this video. you see i play records using horn and pin (i know its bad for the vinyl) and I didnt know how to make the sound louder. thank you thank you so much!!!!!!!!! ^_^
Yes, it is indeed very noisy. But the music does overcome it for the most part. The sound-equalizing character of the video doesn't really convey just how loud the machine plays, though the blower noise is very certainly evident in real life. It's far from an ideal setup. There's hardly any situation where these were practical, which is one reason why so few were sold.
Impressive bit of engineering, sound quality seems pretty good from the video and they overcame the noisy compressor with sheer volume. Better suited to playing 2000 era rock and pop recordings than orchestral pieces with a high dynamic range I imagine.
What? Literally all wind instruments work with air. That's what an organ is, a gigantic collection of flutes and reed instruments. Nowadays they're all converted to run off compressed air, or rather, they always did, but in the past the air was compressed by a pump, manual or otherwise.
See, if it were me, I'd have put the compressor in a box away from the gramophone part, and had a tube to send the air through. That way you could stick the compressor in a cupboard out of the way somewhere, covered in blankets. Still it's amazing they had sound amplification before electronics. Ingeniously simple how the little valve works that does the job. I recall reading about a telephone amplifier that was also mechanical. Used a disc of rotating chalk, that had variable stickiness to a nearby brake, controlled by the voice current in the phone. The disc sort-of scraped on a part to make the noise. We are so lucky to have transistors!
This is exactly what was done in Queen's Hall, London, when an Auxetophone was installed for Sir Henry Wood to try. The blowers were put in the basement. The hall's management were rather disappointed by the amount of electricity it consumed.
Valves are fine too. The only problem with valves really is waste heat. If the valve could be made to work without heat, it would like be better, at least in audio.
I've heard the one from the famous collection outside of Chicago and there was lots of distortion (with a clean record and fresf needle) but it was loud!.
They hooked up this "pickup" to string instrument's bridges complete with horn and hose fed air from remote box. One was played from the top of the Eiffel Tower. All of Paris heard him play that day.
Both are fascinating pieces of engineering, but with the second, I would not be sanguine about having a flame-powered engine inside a wooden cabinet in an indoor setting.
Thanks for posting this! The motor sounds pretty loud itself, but I suppose that noise is drowned out by the music. One question: does the compressor motor run all the time, or cycle off and on as the air tank pressure changes? Bob
It would also be interesting to combine amplifier of this type with a crystal radio. By the way, this is not the only sound amplification method available before tubes. Another one is carbon amplifier. It was used with crystal radios sometimes those days, as well as in hearing aids.
Yup, although technically this would work without any electricity at all. You'd need a steam or petrol engine or something to compress the air with, of course. Best to do that in another room, or possibly somebody else's house, and have the compressed air coming down a long tube. Actually gas was piped to people's houses in cities, for use in lighting and heating. There were small engines that ran off it. So maybe one of those in the cellar compressing the air, then a discreet pipe up into the living room. You might be able to limit the volume by limiting the air pressure you supply to it. And then, yes, use it for radio too. You could perhaps rest the gramophone needle on your earpiece's diaphragm, or even rig up something electromagnetic to move the auxetophone valve, though it would be a very weak electromagnet. I dunno, it's the sort of thing you'd tinker with as a gentleman of leisure.
@@greenaum Есть возможность механическим способом создавать воздушное давление. Его изобрели за долго до появления грамм записей. Используют по всюду где есть музыкальный орган. Во время игры на органе человек педалями накачивает меха и создаёт необходимое давление. А давление в органе очень большое.
According to newspaper records, this unit was installed at the Electric Theatre in Eugene, OR in 1908. Unfortunately fire destroyed the property in 1909.
Wonder why they didn't dd a simple valve to control air flow to the tonearm and thus control volume? Maybe they were so excited that the amplification idea works and didn't want to suppress it one decibel.
1950s electrical recordings are the guiltiest in that regard in my humble opinion. I have two early rock and roll records on the "Quality" label that, when played on my portable Czechoslovak gramophone, fill the entire house.
that is fantastic. great invention. I wonder if the process could be reversed for recording, so it would have recorded at a high volume on the disc in the studio, that might have been a good idea!hmmm... :) 5 stars!!
Yes, you could put a diaphragm over the horn, of course a somewhat smaller horn, and use that to drive a cutting needle to make louder records. Edison had something like that. It didn't use the Auxetophone valve, but rather something cruder, but it either worked, or else he lied and said it did. Either is likely.
I suppose it runs on quite low pressure air, but with quite a high airflow. So the tank barely has time to develop any pressure, it just smooths out the waves of air that come from the compressor, lets them expand and contract and cancel each other out in the tank. The pipes going in and out are both about the same width.
Why not start making pneumatic sound amplifiers again and market them to asudiophiles as something that is even older than tubes. Such amplifiers can also be made by hobbyists. For example, steampunk hobbyists, as well as Amish, who are very experienced in pneumatics.
I heard on NPR a few years back about a production team making a device to amplify the voice at orthodox Jewish synagogue during Sabbath day. I already knew of the pneumatic amplifier. NASA to test things like pumps and lines wanted to mimic the explosive effects of the main motors in the Atlas3 during the early space race. Hundreds of PSI air and cone servo valve giving about 500 dB of sound pressure. That's the worlds baddest subwoofer ever.
You should consider a modern compressor or at least a modern drive motor for the compressor. The compressor is extremely loud going by the video. Also, you could regulate the air better for quieter amplification.
Funny how the air makes it louder Who would have bought this back then? A hall or auditorium? I can't imagine tis was meant for home use unless you were deaf
@6dBperOctave yes, Americans do seem to have a rather nearsighted outlook, but I do believe it was based on an Edison patent in embryo, correct? I was reading a history of loudspeakers and they were showing the earliest prototypes, and the earliest example they had was an early dynamic speaker showing the ''RCA" design, but clearly labeled Peerless! So many questions.... I'm curious about the Jensen horns, and by what means they were actuated. As far as I can tell, though I've not gone down the rabbit hole very far, they resembled more the resonators used in Gramaphones of the day... but what was the means of movement? Moving coil? Moving magnet? They were already using crude amplifiers, I'm assuming, with the Audion tube.... or something directly descended from it, And I guess i'm curious if it used some kind of direct coupled design, or something all together different?... It's one thing that seems to have been glossed over... And many of these inventors just seem to be the first person to make it to the patent office within accurate Theory of operation. (The very tube used, in fact, likely pilfered and patented by a man with no knowledge of such things, and the list goes on!).
LOL. That's not exactly setting the bar very high. "No highs, no lows. Must be Bose." :-) Seriously, though, what an outstanding machine this is, and a great demonstration, too. In it's day, it was no doubt at the top of the heap when it came to audio reproduction. Awesome to see it still working.
Not only is the Auxetophone amazing, so is that performance of "Stars and Stripes Forever;" I personally usually find acoustic renditions of standard repertoire to be poorly performed; this would be way before early electrics by great music directors. This is actually performed at that level; I wonder who it is?
I imagine this could have sounded great in it had been further developed. I can even suggest a few things to improve. Put the compresor in a separate room. Have the diaphragm drive a topical modern speaker. Lol.
I have never heard one of these play before. Sounds great and very loud. Where did you get this one? Are thoses chocolate phonographs on the mantle? Thanks
The tank is only to equalize the pressure. It holds very little air (and has a release valve if the pressure gets too high). You can notice in the video that when the blower motor is shut off the sound drops to nothing in barely a second. So the motor has to be running constantly.
i dont really see the appeal for them when they were new, huge cost and you constanntly have the loud air compressor whuring away in the background, i would have got a regular gramophone with a large horn (like a emg or u.s equivelant) and used a loud tone needle BUT now it is a great peice of mechanical music history and i would buy one myself and annoy the neighbors if they werent expensive today
I don't understand how compressing the air makes it louder. Is it because compressed air transmits sound waves better than thin atmospheric air? Like how wood or iron, or water, conducts sound much better than air?
OK I watched it again and understand. There is no diaphragm attached to the needle, it's an air valve that opens and closes with the vibration from the needle. Incredible!
What a cacophony! That is so loud, the motor generates too much noise, and the audio so poor. This is a true case of 'Amplifliction' and 'Obnoxiousphone' :-)
Развлечения
![If you can't hear this then you're not an audiophile [See description for link to followup video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/48PxwspDvrE/mqdefault.jpg)
Amazing Machine! Thanks for Posting!
I'm getting in here really late, like 10 years late, but I just happened to bump into this tonight and I was astounded. I really thought I'd seen it all in the line of High Fidelity, but this Air powered Amp just blew me away! Hmm, I wonder if this invention ever evolved to the point of Stereo Implementation? If so I wonder if they had to use 2 separate air pumps to achieve a good Signal to noise ratio, or if a simple 1 to 2 "Y" connector adapter would work without objectionable Cross-Talk? And this baby is Expensive! 500 bucks in 1906 is around $13,500.00 today. Not a bad price to pay though for a Major piece of Audiophile history... Thanks for posting that Rene.
There weren't such a thing as stereo discs in those days. If you wanted stereo you'd have to buy a second gramophone!
Believe it or not, this is not the only model and they were made for cylinder records as well, though they weren't for outdoor use and were quieter. There is a video on youtube of a cylinder record being played by such a machine and the fidelity is excellent for what it is.
What a splendid demonstration of a beautiful device. Presumably the compressed air can generate the sound compressions but not the rarefactions. So, technically, we are hearing a half-wave rectified version of the audio signal in the groove. Nevertheless, it works amazingly well; and was elegantly packaged by Victor.
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to hear these early inventions - fascinating!
Thanks for demonstrating this. I'm just now getting into collecting victrolas and this is extremely unique - and interesting to me as a physicist!
Floored! Absolutely incredible.
What an awesome machine! Thank you for letting us see it work. :)
Incredibly educational video, and it's so well done. Thanks for posting it.
I never knew victor made anything like this! Amazing!
Is it the same Victor company of Japan that still exists, who trade in the West as JVC? Nice!
@@greenaum It is, as JVC was the Japanese counterpart of the American Victor Co.
This came from the legendary EMI collection in London, auctioned in 1980 by Sotheby's. It had been in storage in their collection for at least 50 years by then. The phonographs on the mantle were indeed made by Stollwerck chocolate co,. both the 1903 and 1904 versions.
Thank you so much for posting this video.
Great vid man, nice to see one of these outside of books
Great video! Amazing machine!
What happens when you play a 1920's eletrically recorded record? I bet you really get some amplification! It's a beautiful machine. I wonder how many are still in existence?
I can't imagine more than 1000 or so were ever made, so there's probably only a few dozen left at the very most.
Wonderful old technology, it worked well for the era. No doubt could be used for public dances and so on. Thanks, I'll pass long to some audiophiles. I had no idea that air could amplify sound.
the rene rondeau????!!!! the famous phonograph collector? this is amazing. oh yes and thank u so much for assisting me in my "vinyl amplifying" problems through this video. you see i play records using horn and pin (i know its bad for the vinyl) and I didnt know how to make the sound louder. thank you thank you so much!!!!!!!!! ^_^
I have a few great Caruso red label Victors, including "Over There." The sound really is incredible!
that would have been great to hear but i'm too late.
Fascinating.
Yes, it is indeed very noisy. But the music does overcome it for the most part. The sound-equalizing character of the video doesn't really convey just how loud the machine plays, though the blower noise is very certainly evident in real life. It's far from an ideal setup. There's hardly any situation where these were practical, which is one reason why so few were sold.
¡Ufff! que fuerte suena esa cosa,era muy potente para la época.
Impressive bit of engineering, sound quality seems pretty good from the video and they overcame the noisy compressor with sheer volume. Better suited to playing 2000 era rock and pop recordings than orchestral pieces with a high dynamic range I imagine.
I've been curious if a musical instrument could work with compressed air, like an organ, but this is the closest thing I've found.
What? Literally all wind instruments work with air. That's what an organ is, a gigantic collection of flutes and reed instruments. Nowadays they're all converted to run off compressed air, or rather, they always did, but in the past the air was compressed by a pump, manual or otherwise.
@@greenaum I'm talking about compressed air supplied by a stand alone electric or gas air compressor, not built
into the instrument.
Wow! Ha ha! That compressor was so noisy, I thought for sure you wouldn’t be able to hear much, but boy! Was I wrong. That’s amazing!
See, if it were me, I'd have put the compressor in a box away from the gramophone part, and had a tube to send the air through. That way you could stick the compressor in a cupboard out of the way somewhere, covered in blankets.
Still it's amazing they had sound amplification before electronics. Ingeniously simple how the little valve works that does the job.
I recall reading about a telephone amplifier that was also mechanical. Used a disc of rotating chalk, that had variable stickiness to a nearby brake, controlled by the voice current in the phone. The disc sort-of scraped on a part to make the noise. We are so lucky to have transistors!
This is exactly what was done in Queen's Hall, London, when an Auxetophone was installed for Sir Henry Wood to try. The blowers were put in the basement. The hall's management were rather disappointed by the amount of electricity it consumed.
Valves are fine too. The only problem with valves really is waste heat. If the valve could be made to work without heat, it would like be better, at least in audio.
That is a crazy contraption.
Horace L Short you legend.
I've heard the one from the famous collection outside of Chicago and there was lots of distortion (with a clean record and fresf needle) but it was loud!.
They hooked up this "pickup" to string instrument's bridges complete with horn and hose fed air from remote box. One was played from the top of the Eiffel Tower. All of Paris heard him play that day.
Both are fascinating pieces of engineering, but with the second, I would not be sanguine about having a flame-powered engine inside a wooden cabinet in an indoor setting.
Must sound marvelous!
Have any other tunes for it?
Actually, it was $500, as you can see in the original ad at 0:20 in the video. But that translates to well over $12,000 in today's dollars.
Thanks for posting this! The motor sounds pretty loud itself, but I suppose that noise is drowned out by the music. One question: does the compressor motor run all the time, or cycle off and on as the air tank pressure changes?
Bob
It would also be interesting to combine amplifier of this type with a crystal radio. By the way, this is not the only sound amplification method available before tubes. Another one is carbon amplifier. It was used with crystal radios sometimes those days, as well as in hearing aids.
Yup, although technically this would work without any electricity at all. You'd need a steam or petrol engine or something to compress the air with, of course. Best to do that in another room, or possibly somebody else's house, and have the compressed air coming down a long tube.
Actually gas was piped to people's houses in cities, for use in lighting and heating. There were small engines that ran off it. So maybe one of those in the cellar compressing the air, then a discreet pipe up into the living room. You might be able to limit the volume by limiting the air pressure you supply to it. And then, yes, use it for radio too. You could perhaps rest the gramophone needle on your earpiece's diaphragm, or even rig up something electromagnetic to move the auxetophone valve, though it would be a very weak electromagnet. I dunno, it's the sort of thing you'd tinker with as a gentleman of leisure.
@@greenaum Есть возможность механическим способом создавать воздушное давление. Его изобрели за долго до появления грамм записей.
Используют по всюду где есть музыкальный орган.
Во время игры на органе человек педалями накачивает меха и создаёт необходимое давление.
А давление в органе очень большое.
According to newspaper records, this unit was installed at the Electric Theatre in Eugene, OR in 1908. Unfortunately fire destroyed the property in 1909.
Wonder why they didn't dd a simple valve to control air flow to the tonearm and thus control volume? Maybe they were so excited that the amplification idea works and didn't want to suppress it one decibel.
The song is Stars and Stripes Forever.
awesome machine! I've read that an Exhibition can be used in place of the Auxetophone soundbox, have you ever tried?
Is the blower as noisy as it sound on the video?,
Wow! i just calculated how much that would have cost, it was well over what 10,500 dollars is worth now!
1950s electrical recordings are the guiltiest in that regard in my humble opinion. I have two early rock and roll records on the "Quality" label that, when played on my portable Czechoslovak gramophone, fill the entire house.
that is fantastic. great invention. I wonder if the process could be reversed for recording, so it would have recorded at a high volume on the disc in the studio, that might have been a good idea!hmmm... :) 5 stars!!
Yes, you could put a diaphragm over the horn, of course a somewhat smaller horn, and use that to drive a cutting needle to make louder records. Edison had something like that. It didn't use the Auxetophone valve, but rather something cruder, but it either worked, or else he lied and said it did. Either is likely.
How did you figure that out? How much would 30 dollars be today?
Thanks
The compressor runs continuously while the machine is playing. The moment it is shut off, the volume drops down to nothing.
I suppose it runs on quite low pressure air, but with quite a high airflow. So the tank barely has time to develop any pressure, it just smooths out the waves of air that come from the compressor, lets them expand and contract and cancel each other out in the tank. The pipes going in and out are both about the same width.
@Dillybar777 thanks! i was gonna ask that
Why not start making pneumatic sound amplifiers again and market them to asudiophiles as something that is even older than tubes. Such amplifiers can also be made by hobbyists. For example, steampunk hobbyists, as well as Amish, who are very experienced in pneumatics.
The oldest form of amplifying sound is to have more musicians. 10 trombones is louder than 1. Have 100 people in the chorus instead of one singer.
hyzercreek And this method is still used.
I heard on NPR a few years back about a production team making a device to amplify the voice at orthodox Jewish synagogue during Sabbath day. I already knew of the pneumatic amplifier.
NASA to test things like pumps and lines wanted to mimic the explosive effects of the main motors in the Atlas3 during the early space race. Hundreds of PSI air and cone servo valve giving about 500 dB of sound pressure. That's the worlds baddest subwoofer ever.
You should consider a modern compressor or at least a modern drive motor for the compressor. The compressor is extremely loud going by the video.
Also, you could regulate the air better for quieter amplification.
A steam engine would be perfect for some added kick!
Funny how the air makes it louder
Who would have bought this back then?
A hall or auditorium?
I can't imagine tis was meant for home use unless you were deaf
Better than a Bose!
I heard these things break easily. I also heard that the auxetophone was a commercial flop.
at 500 dollars and it having a limited use to large venues, it probably had a very limited customer base
An example of Phonographic Yankee ingenuity!
The patent holder was C A Parsons of Newcastle upon Tyne in England.
@6dBperOctave yes, Americans do seem to have a rather nearsighted outlook, but I do believe it was based on an Edison patent in embryo, correct? I was reading a history of loudspeakers and they were showing the earliest prototypes, and the earliest example they had was an early dynamic speaker showing the ''RCA" design, but clearly labeled Peerless! So many questions.... I'm curious about the Jensen horns, and by what means they were actuated. As far as I can tell, though I've not gone down the rabbit hole very far, they resembled more the resonators used in Gramaphones of the day... but what was the means of movement? Moving coil? Moving magnet? They were already using crude amplifiers, I'm assuming, with the Audion tube.... or something directly descended from it, And I guess i'm curious if it used some kind of direct coupled design, or something all together different?... It's one thing that seems to have been glossed over... And many of these inventors just seem to be the first person to make it to the patent office within accurate Theory of operation. (The very tube used, in fact, likely pilfered and patented by a man with no knowledge of such things, and the list goes on!).
Sorry for the typos. My phone corrects me incorrectly, and I've had to just learn to live with it.
LOL. That's not exactly setting the bar very high. "No highs, no lows. Must be Bose." :-)
Seriously, though, what an outstanding machine this is, and a great demonstration, too. In it's day, it was no doubt at the top of the heap when it came to audio reproduction. Awesome to see it still working.
Its very noisy close up. I guess this was meant to be listened to far enough away that the mechanical noise wouldn't be heard?
Not only is the Auxetophone amazing, so is that performance of "Stars and Stripes Forever;" I personally usually find acoustic renditions of standard repertoire to be poorly performed; this would be way before early electrics by great music directors.
This is actually performed at that level; I wonder who it is?
I imagine this could have sounded great in it had been further developed. I can even suggest a few things to improve. Put the compresor in a separate room. Have the diaphragm drive a topical modern speaker. Lol.
I have never heard one of these play before. Sounds great and very loud. Where did you get this one? Are thoses chocolate phonographs on the mantle?
Thanks
Does the pump have to be on at all times, or can the tank hold enough air for one song if the pump runs for a minute?
The tank is only to equalize the pressure. It holds very little air (and has a release valve if the pressure gets too high). You can notice in the video that when the blower motor is shut off the sound drops to nothing in barely a second. So the motor has to be running constantly.
THAT'S analog!
i dont really see the appeal for them when they were new, huge cost and you constanntly have the loud air compressor whuring away in the background, i would have got a regular gramophone with a large horn (like a emg or u.s equivelant) and used a loud tone needle BUT now it is a great peice of mechanical music history and i would buy one myself and annoy the neighbors if they werent expensive today
I don't understand how compressing the air makes it louder. Is it because compressed air transmits sound waves better than thin atmospheric air? Like how wood or iron, or water, conducts sound much better than air?
OK I watched it again and understand. There is no diaphragm attached to the needle, it's an air valve that opens and closes with the vibration from the needle. Incredible!
$801.81
Just google inflation calculator.
Well, that's pretty cool. Make a video with some good 70's rock played through it.
The reproduction isn't bad, considering it's age.
What a cacophony! That is so loud, the motor generates too much noise, and the audio so poor. This is a true case of 'Amplifliction' and 'Obnoxiousphone' :-)
This rec ord pla yer is sou nd brigh t ekscept ov erdriv e