AN EARTHQUAKE AND A VIOLIN

Evening Star, Issue 23038, 17 August 1938, Page 9

AN EARTHQUAKE AND A VIOLIN

An earthquake helped to create a new type of violin, the invention of Dr Hugo Benioff, associate professor of seismology at the California Institute of Technology, that is said to have astounded musicians by the depth, volume, and clarity of its tones, reports a Pasadena message to the ‘ New York Times.’ After eight years of research with his ‘‘ seismographic fiddle ” and other string instruments, Dr Benioff invited some of his associates to a. concert in which the orchestra consisted exclusively of earthquake-born instruments. The idea behind the new-type instruments came to Dr Benioff as he watched the gyrations of a seismograph during an earthquake. Both earthquakes and music, he knew, consisted of vibrations. In his spare time he applied the principles of the seismograph to several stringed instruments. Th 6 success of the venture was such that the institute plans to establish a centre of such research in the near future.

In the present forms the violin and ’cello, for example, have the same outlines ns their familiar counterpart, except that the wood fronts and backs are missing, and small aluminium containers beneath the strings substitute for the wood resonance chambers. The container on the ’cello holds a crystal. Vibrations from the strings distort the crystal, causing it to vibrate and generate electrical current. A wire leads this infinitesimal current to amplifying devices, and brings the tones through a specialtype of loud-speaker. Many of Southern California’s leading musicians have tested the new instruments. Without exception, they pronounced Dr Benioff’s inventions superior in tone to the orthodox counterparts. The violin, they said, has a startling new depth, with rich lower tone and clear, rounded high tone of unprecedented degree.