Enders, Bernd / Stange-Elbe, Joachim (Hrsg.): Global Village - Global Brain - Global Music

United States on a nostalgic trip. Today, a Termen society in Moscow is active investigating the multi-faceted activities of the Russian inventor.⁸

8: The Director is Andrej Smirnov.

III

Although not as well known as Termen, Benjamin F. Miessner (1890–1976) was, in a way, a United States counterpoint to the Russian inventor. His first name, Benjamin Franklin, seems to have destined him for a successful inventor’s career.

Miessner was an inventor in a capitalist society, who, not exactly typical of inventors, managed to get rich by his inventions, because he also had a keen business sense. In 1930 RCA bought Miessner’s radio patents for the solution of the alternate current ’hum’ problem in vacuum tubes for the impressive sum of $ 750,000.⁹

9: Thomas L. Rhea, The Evolution of Electronic Musical Instruments in the United States, Phil. Diss., George Peabody College, Nashville, Tenn. 1972, p. 144. On Miessner’s inventions and technical improvements see L.S. Howeth, History of Communication Electronics in the United States Navy, Washington, D.C. 1963, p. 174, p. 269, p. 270 and his own somewhat pertial On the early History of Radio Guidance, San Francisco 1964, in which he claims a lerger role in the early history of radio guidance.

While Termen had scientific, technological and musical gifts accumulated just in one person, himself, Miessner worked in a tandem: he provided the physical and technological knowledge while his brother Otto, head of the University of Kansas music department, contributed the musical know how.

Soon after the First World War he designed a wheeled box called the ‘Electric Dog’ which demonstrated the principle of phototropism. A strong light pointed at the ‘dog’ affected by photoelectric cells, operating relays which caused the device to move toward the light. Variations of this concept were burglar alarms developed later, but also the heat seeking missiles from the 1960s onwards.¹⁰

10: Rhea, op. cit., p. 108.

Parallels to Termen’s activities are obvious.

Partly instigated by his brother, Benjamin Miessner in 1926 applied for a patent for a musical instrument based on a photoelectric scanning system.

However, it was difficult to put this principle into practice, because there were various problems unsolved with photoelectric generators. When, as in most cases, a large number of electric lamps was used and operated from an alternating current outlet, the problem of obtaining a steady light arose. Also, the required high intensity lamps frequently burned out.¹¹

11: Benjamin F. Miessner, ‘Electronic Music and Instruments’, Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 1936, vol. 24, p. 1450. On optoelectronic instruments see also Volker Straebel, ‘Klang aus Licht. Eine kleine Geschichte der Photozelle in Musik und Klangkunst’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 1997, vol. 158, p. 36–41.

Undisturbed by those setbacks Miessner worked on a large number of inventions. Together with his brother Otto and independent of Termen he developed a Rhythmicon for producing complex rhythmical patterns, as well as an optigraph, a device to visually display notes played on a keyboard. In 1930 he set up a laboratory in Millburn, New Jersey, electrifying almost every instrument – piano, organ, saxophone, clarinet, violin, guitar, kettle-drum, harmonica – he could get hold of.¹²

12: Rhea, op. cit., p. 109.