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Inside This Issue
1
The Hero You’ve Probably Never Heard Of — And Why He Matters Now
2
Spooky Movie Magic Without the Scares
Our Hometown Hero in the Making: Deon Joins the Ranks
3
Gourd Times Ahead: Halloween Jokes to Carve Out Some Smiles!
Apple Upside-Down Cake
Follow Us @KPatricklaw
4
History’s Forgotten Music Machine
Receivers and Rhapsodies
The Birth of Streaming Sound
We celebrate the late Steve Jobs of Apple and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek as innovators in the world of music streaming, but the true pioneer of how most of us enjoy tunes in 2025 is a man who died nearly a century ago. A lawyer by trade, Thaddeus Cahill (1867–1934) spent his free time as an innovator, a hobby that eventually led him to revolutionize sound. In 1897, he received a patent for the Telharmonium, a 200-ton organ created to turn telephones into what could be considered the world’s first iPods. Looking
more like a NASA control board than a musical instrument, the Telharmonium used electromagnetic impulses to create sounds similar to those of modern synthesizers and transmit them over telephone networks, essentially making the “hold music” of its time. Although bulky, the invention captured the hearts of music aficionados, including Mark Twain, who famously said, “I couldn’t possibly leave the world until I have heard this again and again.” The instrument made its public debut in 1906 with the opening of Telharmonic Hall in New York City. Guests could grab one of the phone receivers placed throughout the venue and listen to the synthesized music Telharmonium operators were performing on the floor below. Soon, phone users embraced Cahill’s technology at theaters, eateries, hotels, and homes nationwide. Unfortunately, the system proved glitchy, the organ’s electronic tones interrupted ordinary phone users mid-conversation, and AT&T decided not to invest in Cahill’s impractical invention to expand its reach. That inconvenience, coupled with high manufacturing costs (each Telharmonium cost $200,000, a fortune then) and operational demands (it required 2–4 musicians to play), eventually led to declining popularity and the closing of Telharmonic Hall by 1920.
Sadly, no surviving audio recordings of the Telharmonium are believed to exist, and its last known version was dismantled and scrapped in the early 1960s.
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