Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It's time for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff Tidbits episode. This was a little different from
Speaker 1: the ones I typically do, and it's because, uh, well,
Speaker 1: it's because of a few things. First of all, among
Speaker 1: all my other geek equalities, I am a musical theater fan,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of musical theater folks and even
Speaker 1: people outside of musical theater fandom, I absolutely was captivated
Speaker 1: by Lynn Manuel Miranda's Hamilton's when that debuted several years
Speaker 1: ago now, and one thing that delighted me was discovering
Speaker 1: that he had written some songs that didn't make it
Speaker 1: into the show, and one of those songs was about
Speaker 1: one of America's iconic founding father as a man who
Speaker 1: was never president but was a very important ambassador and
Speaker 1: an inventor and uh kind of a smart alec, Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 1: And he wrote a song for Benjamin Franklin, who was
Speaker 1: originally going to appear in Hamilton's, but ultimately it just
Speaker 1: didn't really make sense for the scope of the show,
Speaker 1: so it got cut, but he handed the lyrics over
Speaker 1: to the band, the Decembrists. Apparently he said that he
Speaker 1: had always thought of it as having a sort of
Speaker 1: sound like the Decembrists other music. So the Decembrists composed
Speaker 1: music to go along with these lyrics. They padded it
Speaker 1: out a little bit and you get Ben Franklin's song
Speaker 1: Word of Warning. That song, while hilarious, also has a
Speaker 1: lot of coarse language in it. It is not family friendly,
Speaker 1: I will say that, but it's very, very entertaining, and
Speaker 1: in part of it long story short, too late, there's
Speaker 1: a reference to the hardened glass armonica or harmonica, both
Speaker 1: words have been used to describe it. And that made
Speaker 1: me want to do an episode about this particular invention,
Speaker 1: because not only was it a really cool invention, a
Speaker 1: really neat idea to create an entirely new musical instrument
Speaker 1: based off of older techniques, but also because this instrument
Speaker 1: has a very strange reputation as a reputation for causing distress,
Speaker 1: though it's entirely possible this reputation was invented rather than earned,
Speaker 1: sort of like how reports of chaos in the wake
Speaker 1: of the War of the World's Radio Broadcast seem to
Speaker 1: have been more exaggerated not you know, if not entirely
Speaker 1: invented out of whole cloth. If you've ever looked into
Speaker 1: the supposed panic caused by the War of the World's
Speaker 1: Radio Broadcast, you find out there wasn't so much panic
Speaker 1: as there was a lot of media reports about alleged panic. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like that may have also been the case
Speaker 1: with the the panic around the glass armonica. But we'll
Speaker 1: get there, and I'll also call out another podcast which
Speaker 1: did a full episode about that and it is really
Speaker 1: really good. So first let's talk about what the hardened
Speaker 1: glass harmonica or armonica was really based off of and
Speaker 1: what it does and how it all comes down to
Speaker 1: glass harps. So that's another name for an instrument that
Speaker 1: uses a series of glasses, like like drinking glasses. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're made out of crystal wine glasses are pretty common.
Speaker 1: The player of this instrument runs a wet finger around
Speaker 1: the rim of a glass or sometimes multiple glasses, and
Speaker 1: this produces an ethereal note at least if you do
Speaker 1: it correctly, the glass sings, it vibrates and rings out.
Speaker 1: So using different sizes of glasses, or by adding or
Speaker 1: removing some liquid to a glass or several glasses. It
Speaker 1: allows you to make different notes to produce different pitches.
Speaker 1: If you add more water to a glass, that actually
Speaker 1: produces a lower pitch. I'll explain why in just a second. So,
Speaker 1: with a collection of these glasses that are each tuned
Speaker 1: just right to represent specific notes on the musical scale,
Speaker 1: a skilled player can actually play a tune on glasses
Speaker 1: running their fingers around it. I'm sure you've seen this,
Speaker 1: or maybe you've seen videos of it. Maybe you've done
Speaker 1: it yourself. It's not difficult to do. You can actually
Speaker 1: just do this with your typical glass. It has to
Speaker 1: be glass typically, because that's what you're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to get something to make a note that's that's audible. Now,
Speaker 1: to understand what's going on, we do have to go
Speaker 1: into some physics. And first up, we need to t
Speaker 1: about friction. Now, I'm sure all of you know what
Speaker 1: friction is already, but just to set a foundation, friction
Speaker 1: is the resistance you encounter when one surface moves across
Speaker 1: another surface. Obviously, that resistance depends upon the surfaces. Like
Speaker 1: if you were to take two pieces of silk and
Speaker 1: rub them against each other, you would find that they
Speaker 1: produce a lot less friction than if you took two
Speaker 1: pieces of rough grade sand paper and then rub the
Speaker 1: sandpaper parts against each other. You have a lot more
Speaker 1: friction in that second case. But when your finger makes
Speaker 1: contact with a glass, there's friction between your finger and
Speaker 1: the glass, which is a good thing, or else you
Speaker 1: would never be able to pick up that glass, and
Speaker 1: you would never be able to take a drink, and
Speaker 1: you'd be very, very thirsty. But the friction can be
Speaker 1: enough to make your fingertips stick against the glasses surface
Speaker 1: a little bit, so it's actually not that easy to
Speaker 1: move your finger smoothly along the rim of the glass.
Speaker 1: And for that reason, glass harp players will first wet
Speaker 1: their fingers. They'll dip their fingers in some liquid. Uh.
Speaker 1: I remember back when I was first learning about this,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, it was always vinegar for
Speaker 1: some reason, but it could be other stuff. Wine is
Speaker 1: also pretty common, especially uh for things like someone doing
Speaker 1: this at a party. They would use wine glasses with
Speaker 1: wine in them filled to different levels and it would
Speaker 1: be called like singing wine. And uh. This introduces this
Speaker 1: liquid on your fingers introduces a layer of lubrication that
Speaker 1: allows the finger to slip against the glass more readily.
Speaker 1: And of course it is possible to make your fingers
Speaker 1: too slippery, because if there's two slippery, then they aren't
Speaker 1: producing enough vibration for you to have a note. So
Speaker 1: what you really need is the perfect balance so that
Speaker 1: your finger is creating enough but not too much friction
Speaker 1: as you're moving it around the rim in a circle.
Speaker 1: And when this happens, when you get that just right
Speaker 1: with the right pressure and the right amount of lubrication,
Speaker 1: the motion you are creating will cause vibrations to move
Speaker 1: through the glass and this ends up being the note
Speaker 1: that you hear. Now. I have talked a lot about
Speaker 1: sound in tons of previous episodes of Tech Stuff, but
Speaker 1: we'll go over it again really quickly. Sound, when you
Speaker 1: get down to it, is really vibration. Our perception of sound,
Speaker 1: hearing being the primary way for most people to perceive sound,
Speaker 1: involves sensing vibrations. So in hearing, this typically means that
Speaker 1: something has produced vibrations significant enough to cause air molecules
Speaker 1: around it to fluctuate, so you get little changes in
Speaker 1: air pressure. Air molecules are kind of pushing against each
Speaker 1: other and then pushing back. So the air molecules themselves
Speaker 1: are vibrating, and they vibrate outward from the source of
Speaker 1: the sound. If the vibrations are great enough, if they
Speaker 1: have enough amplitude, and we aren't too far away from
Speaker 1: the source, we can experience these fluctuations of air molecules.
Speaker 1: The changes in air pressure can affect our ear drums
Speaker 1: cause the ear drum to vibrate, and tiny bones in
Speaker 1: our inner ear connected to the ear drum also connect
Speaker 1: to the cochlea. Uh, it's a structure in our inner
Speaker 1: ear that contains an organ called the organ of corte
Speaker 1: or court. I. Now, I don't want to get two
Speaker 1: bogged down in all of this because it gets into
Speaker 1: a lot of physiology that I'm just not prepared to
Speaker 1: chat about. But essentially what's happening is little nerves in
Speaker 1: our ears pick up these vibrations and transform that into
Speaker 1: signals that our brain can interpret as the experience of sound.
Speaker 1: So when you try trace it all back to the
Speaker 1: source again, it's all about vibration. Now. The rate at
Speaker 1: which something vibrates is called a frequency, and we use
Speaker 1: a unit of measure for frequency called a hurts, and
Speaker 1: this tells us the number of times something has a
Speaker 1: full oscillation within a second. So an oscillation is you
Speaker 1: can think of it as going from the starting point
Speaker 1: to the end point and back to the starting point again,
Speaker 1: like if you're if you're making waves with a jump
Speaker 1: rope or something like that, it's one full wave length
Speaker 1: would be an oscillation. So if something vibrates only once
Speaker 1: a second, that would be one hurts. The range of
Speaker 1: typical human hearing is between twenty hurts or twenty oscillations
Speaker 1: or vibrations per second, which would be a very very
Speaker 1: low pitched sound, and it goes up to twenty thousand
Speaker 1: hurts or twenty killer hurts that would be a very
Speaker 1: very high pitch sound because whatever is vibrating is vibrating
Speaker 1: twenty thousand times per second. Also, as we get older,
Speaker 1: we typically start to lose hearing at certain pitches, so
Speaker 1: are arranged narrows. This is why you will hear stories
Speaker 1: about stores that will play sounds at much higher pitches
Speaker 1: that irritate young people because they still have the capability
Speaker 1: of hearing those those pitches. Well, old people like me
Speaker 1: remain completely unaware because we can't hear those those pitches anymore. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the very basics of hearing from a very very
Speaker 1: very high level. When we come back from this break,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about resonant frequency and what that
Speaker 1: has to do with glass harmonicas. But first let's take
Speaker 1: this quick break. Okay, we're back. Now we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about resonant frequency. So if you have a glass and
Speaker 1: you lightly tap it with say a spoon like think
Speaker 1: about you know, weddings and stuff where people would tap
Speaker 1: their glasses in order to signal that the groom and
Speaker 1: bride should kiss, or that the bride and bride or
Speaker 1: groom and groom should kiss. You know, it's any of
Speaker 1: those cases. So if you tap a glass, it produces
Speaker 1: a tone. That tone it has the resonant frequency of
Speaker 1: that glass. This is the natural frequency of the glasses vibration. Now,
Speaker 1: that depends on lots of stuff. It depends on the
Speaker 1: size and the thickness of the glass, and also whether
Speaker 1: or not anything's in the glass. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: if you put liquid in a glass, you start to
Speaker 1: lower the pitch of the tone it produces. That's because
Speaker 1: liquid actually inhibits vibration. It makes it it's more work
Speaker 1: to vibrate because you've got more matter that you have
Speaker 1: to push around. So the more matter that's in the glass,
Speaker 1: the lower the pitch is going to be because it's
Speaker 1: going to vibrate fewer times per second as a lee,
Speaker 1: so you get a lower pitch. All right. If you
Speaker 1: produce a sound that has the same frequency as the
Speaker 1: resonant frequency of a glass, then that actually induces vibrations
Speaker 1: in the glass as well. So in other words, if
Speaker 1: you were to tap a glass and it played out,
Speaker 1: say middle C, which would be a very low note
Speaker 1: for a glass, but whatever it produces middle C, then
Speaker 1: if you were to produce a middle C sound with
Speaker 1: enough amplitude enough volume, you would cause the glass to
Speaker 1: start vibrating at that resonant frequency, and you could potentially
Speaker 1: do it enough for the glass to deform to the
Speaker 1: point where it breaks. And you've probably seen or heard
Speaker 1: of demonstrations of this. The classic example is you have
Speaker 1: an opera singer producing just the right vocal note with
Speaker 1: just the right amount of of oomph, of amplitude of volume,
Speaker 1: and singing loudly and longly enough to cause a glass
Speaker 1: a shatter. It's a pretty common thing to see in
Speaker 1: like movies and TV. And obviously MythBusters did and a
Speaker 1: thing on it as well where they reproduced a tone
Speaker 1: and show that it is possible. It's not easy to
Speaker 1: do necessarily, but it is possible. Uh. And side note
Speaker 1: on that it is easy to get an object to
Speaker 1: vibrate and its resonant frequencies, which can also include harmonics.
Speaker 1: That gets super complicated. We're not going to dive into
Speaker 1: harmonics in this episode, but uh, it is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: harmonics is what it sounds like, right, So if you
Speaker 1: were to produce a harmonic frequency to a resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: you can also get something to vibrate. But it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to get something to vibrate at any frequency apart
Speaker 1: from its resonant frequency and harmonics. Okay, so let's get
Speaker 1: back to the glass heart. Rubbing your moistened finger along
Speaker 1: the rim of a glass can create just the right
Speaker 1: amount of friction to cause the glass to vibrate at
Speaker 1: its resonant frequency, which produces a note. And if you
Speaker 1: make a whole bunch of glasses and they're all of
Speaker 1: slightly different sizes and thickness, or you fill them with
Speaker 1: different amounts of liquid, you can produce lots of different notes,
Speaker 1: and if you tune these glasses so that they match
Speaker 1: frequencies of specific musical notes, you can play music. It
Speaker 1: does get a little complicated, and um, we should also
Speaker 1: mention that tuning things to specific musical notes it's not
Speaker 1: as straightforward as it sounds, partly because there are different
Speaker 1: definitions of what makes up a musical note, depending on
Speaker 1: whether you're a scientist or a musician. And what do
Speaker 1: I mean by that? Well, Joseph Savour, a French scientist
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century, proposed that middle C the note
Speaker 1: middle C, which if you were to look at a
Speaker 1: piano keyboard and you start on the left side of
Speaker 1: the keyboard, middle C would be the fourth C note
Speaker 1: as you go to the right on the keyboard. Well,
Speaker 1: he said that middle c's frequency should be two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty six hurts. However, there's another standard called the Stuttguard
Speaker 1: pitch or the A four forty pitch, and that one
Speaker 1: marks middle C is having a frequency of two hundred
Speaker 1: sixty one point sixty three hurts. If you were to
Speaker 1: listen to these two tones right one after the other,
Speaker 1: it can be a little challenging to tell them apart,
Speaker 1: because while to fifty six and to sixty one point
Speaker 1: six are different, they're still really close. And the human
Speaker 1: ear is not great at picking up very subtle shifts
Speaker 1: for the typical person. I mean, there are extraordinary people
Speaker 1: out there who are able to detect such things easily.
Speaker 1: I am not one of them. So why did the
Speaker 1: scientific community say middle C should be two fifty six? Hurts?
Speaker 1: It's because tot is a power of two, which makes
Speaker 1: things easier when you're doing calculations. But musicians sort of
Speaker 1: aimed for this a four note at being four forty.
Speaker 1: Uh frequency and that internment that middle C had to
Speaker 1: be to sixty one point sixty three once you started
Speaker 1: to work outward from a four forty. So yeah, two
Speaker 1: different ways of tuning, and uh, it gets pretty subtle,
Speaker 1: but it does make a difference. Now, whatever pitch standard
Speaker 1: you're determined to follow, your job as an aspiring glass
Speaker 1: heart player is to pick out a selection of glasses
Speaker 1: that can produce a tone that's reasonably close to the
Speaker 1: various pitches of musical notes, and then you you designate
Speaker 1: them in some way so that you remember, all right, well,
Speaker 1: this is a this is B, this is C all
Speaker 1: the way up to G, and then all the incidentals
Speaker 1: or accidentals. You would need to have those arranged just
Speaker 1: right so that you could produce the tones that you want.
Speaker 1: And then you would play glasses in specific sequences and
Speaker 1: combinations to produce music. Really talented players can play multiple
Speaker 1: glasses all at the same time by spreading their fingers
Speaker 1: out really wide and making contact with the rims of
Speaker 1: multiple glasses and create things like chords, which is amazing,
Speaker 1: Like when I see someone who's really good at this,
Speaker 1: it is phenomenal. Well, earlier glass instruments actually involves striking
Speaker 1: glasses with like a little a little striking stick for example,
Speaker 1: like a little padded hammer. Um. There are written accounts
Speaker 1: that date to the late seventeenth century, so the late
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, in other words, that actually described playing glasses
Speaker 1: by dipping one's fingers in wine and then rubbing the
Speaker 1: rim of the glass. So we know that at least
Speaker 1: as early as the late sixteen hundreds people had started
Speaker 1: to play glass harps in this way. And now we're
Speaker 1: ready to talk about Benjamin Franklin and his contributions to this.
Speaker 1: So the story goes that Franklin was traveling Europe in
Speaker 1: the mid seventeen hundreds. He was acting as an ambassador
Speaker 1: for the United Eates and visiting uh places like England
Speaker 1: and France and attempting to, you know, advance the interests
Speaker 1: of the colonies at the time and and get them
Speaker 1: in a better position. Uh. And that he attended a
Speaker 1: concert at some point in this range of years during
Speaker 1: which a musician entertained the audience by playing the glass harp,
Speaker 1: and that got old Benny Boy to thinking. See, when
Speaker 1: you have your traditional glass harp, the musician has to
Speaker 1: definitely move between glasses. They constantly are keeping their hands
Speaker 1: in motion as they're rubbing the rims of glasses in
Speaker 1: this circular motion. But Ben thought, what if you could
Speaker 1: rotate the glasses and then you just press a wet
Speaker 1: finger to the rim and you can just hold your
Speaker 1: finger there. You don't have to move your finger around
Speaker 1: the glass. The glass is rotating, So that way you
Speaker 1: can produce this note, but you don't have to do
Speaker 1: this circular motion the whole time. Wouldn't that make it
Speaker 1: easier to play the glass harp? Well? Yeah, but how
Speaker 1: do you do that? So Franklin figured that if you
Speaker 1: could create a stack of tuned glass bowls, each tuned
Speaker 1: to a single note, and then separated from all the
Speaker 1: other bowls with some sort of dampener, like a cork
Speaker 1: type material, so that they're not making contact with each other,
Speaker 1: because if you did that then there would be issues
Speaker 1: with producing the right vibrations. You could create a stack
Speaker 1: of containers tuned from low to high or high to low.
Speaker 1: The largest bowl would produce the lowest note, the smallest
Speaker 1: bowl would produce the highest pitch note. So step one
Speaker 1: was just having glass bowls made that could produce approximations
Speaker 1: of specific musical notes, then finding a way to stack
Speaker 1: them while not having them actually make contact with each other,
Speaker 1: and then finding a way to rotate them so that
Speaker 1: you could rub your fingers against the rim of each
Speaker 1: of these balls and produced these notes. Then Franklin came
Speaker 1: up with this amazing idea of drilling a hole through
Speaker 1: the bottom of each bowl. Through those holes he inserted
Speaker 1: an iron rod. So now you had a stack of bowls.
Speaker 1: The original armonica had thirty seven of them, and they're
Speaker 1: on a stick. And then he turned the stick horizontal,
Speaker 1: and then he mounted it in a cabinet and connected
Speaker 1: the rod to a wheel that could rotate. So this
Speaker 1: is the rotational action that causes the whole rod and
Speaker 1: thus all the balls that are mounted on the rod
Speaker 1: to rotate. So you just put your finger against the
Speaker 1: rim of the bowl and it sings. So he connected
Speaker 1: that wheel to a foot pedal, a treadle similar to
Speaker 1: what you would find on an old treuttle powered sewing machine,
Speaker 1: and he used a belt to connect the two so
Speaker 1: by peddling with your foot you could provide the rotation
Speaker 1: chinal force needed to turn the wheel, which in turn
Speaker 1: was connected to this iron rod that had all these
Speaker 1: bowls mounted on it. So you would treadle, it would
Speaker 1: spin the bowls, and then you would move your fingers
Speaker 1: on the rims of these bowls to produce the music.
Speaker 1: That was composer William Zeitler playing the glass armonica. It
Speaker 1: was truly ingenious and it's drastically simplified playing the glass harp.
Speaker 1: I mean really it was a different instrument that was,
Speaker 1: as he called it, the harmonica or harmonica, and Franklin
Speaker 1: was known to give performances in Europe. He also produced
Speaker 1: some of these for musicians to play. He himself was
Speaker 1: an amateur musician, and according to what I read, people
Speaker 1: were delighted to attend one of his performances where he
Speaker 1: would play well known pieces and some compositions of his
Speaker 1: own on the armonica. But there were other musicians who
Speaker 1: became truly famous for playing this instrument. I imagine it
Speaker 1: was quite the challenge for him to tour around with
Speaker 1: this thing, because you have to pack it up in
Speaker 1: such a way to minimize the possibility of damage. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of glass pieces in there. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of historical harmonicas that suffered damage
Speaker 1: during shipping incidents in the modern era where you had,
Speaker 1: say a museum receiving a glass armonica from some like
Speaker 1: some of Franklin's descendants, and then in the shipping some
Speaker 1: of the bowls got cracked and broken. So it was
Speaker 1: a really delicate instrument still is to this day. I mean,
Speaker 1: the armonica still is a thing, although you're more likely
Speaker 1: to encounter it in a museum than you are on
Speaker 1: the stage. Now we're gonna take a little break. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to get to the weird stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So Franklin invinced this glass armonica and drastically
Speaker 1: changes how you can produce music by by creating these
Speaker 1: vibrations and glass with your fingertips. And his invention was
Speaker 1: a pretty big hit in Europe according to the Franklin Institute,
Speaker 1: and old Benny was just happy to donate his invention
Speaker 1: to the world. He didn't patent it. He didn't file
Speaker 1: a patent for this invention. He apparently thought that there
Speaker 1: was sort of a moral imperative to share your ideas
Speaker 1: with the world in order to contribute to the general improvement,
Speaker 1: and that trying to keep an idea to yourself or
Speaker 1: to maintain ownership of it was almost like an immoral
Speaker 1: or evil thing to do. Um keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: he also was enjoying a lot of support from his country,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't in a position where he was like
Speaker 1: starving or anything of the sort. So he was in
Speaker 1: a real position of privilege as well. We have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that anyway. Composers, including really famous ones like Mozart
Speaker 1: and Beethoven, wrote pieces for the glass armonica, but the
Speaker 1: instrument was somewhat limited in scope. You could actually change
Speaker 1: the the amplitude or volume of the notes you played
Speaker 1: by adjusting how much pressure you were putting on the
Speaker 1: rims of the bowls as you played them, but only
Speaker 1: to a point. And if you were to combine the
Speaker 1: armonica with an orchestra of other instruments, it was very
Speaker 1: easy for the armonica's sound to get lost in the
Speaker 1: mix because there was a limited amount of volume you
Speaker 1: could produce. So it had limited utility, which meant that,
Speaker 1: you know, you could have these nice little pieces written
Speaker 1: for it almost distractions, but you couldn't easily incorporated into
Speaker 1: more um ambitious works of music. Another drawback of the
Speaker 1: harmonica is obviously it is a very physically delicate instrument,
Speaker 1: and when you make an instrument out of glass, he
Speaker 1: really takes some risks. They were expensive to make because
Speaker 1: you had to get the bowl sizes just right to
Speaker 1: produce the notes you needed, and so the instrument also
Speaker 1: had limited practicality just because they were difficult to keep
Speaker 1: in good working order and they were expensive to repair
Speaker 1: or replace. But the truly weird part of this instrument
Speaker 1: is that they got a reputation for given people the
Speaker 1: hebe gebs or worse, the sound produced could be perceived
Speaker 1: as unpleasant or unsettling to some kind of like how
Speaker 1: some people really the sound made when you rub your
Speaker 1: hand against the surface of a of a rubber balloon,
Speaker 1: or the horrible fingernails down the chalkboard sound like those
Speaker 1: just make people's skin crawl. Well, some people had a
Speaker 1: similar reaction to hearing the music produced by the armonica,
Speaker 1: and there are rose reports of people having unpleasant reactions
Speaker 1: or worse what during or shortly following an harmonica performance.
Speaker 1: One of the quotes I found while doing research on this,
Speaker 1: at least in most of the sources I came across,
Speaker 1: allegedly came from an eighteenth century writer, Dave J. C.
Speaker 1: Miller and says, quote, it is true that the armonica
Speaker 1: has strange effects on people. If you are irritated or
Speaker 1: disturbed by bad news, by friends, or even by a
Speaker 1: disappointing lady, abstain from playing it. It would only increase
Speaker 1: your disturbance. End quote. Now, the reason why I said
Speaker 1: came from allegedly came from a writer named J. C.
Speaker 1: Miller is that's the name that I found in a
Speaker 1: lot of different sources that all seemed to be pulling
Speaker 1: from the same roots source, and I could not find J. C. Miller.
Speaker 1: I kept looking at I kept trying to find the
Speaker 1: original source, and eventually I found out why I couldn't
Speaker 1: find J. C. Miller because at some point someone must
Speaker 1: have made a mistake with that person's name, and a
Speaker 1: lot of other people repeated that mistake, and thus J. C.
Speaker 1: Miller was born. But no, the actual person who did
Speaker 1: say that quote, although it was in German so it
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly the same as how I just recited it
Speaker 1: was a man named Johann Christian Mueller in his work
Speaker 1: and light zoom zeb stunt off their harmonica or method
Speaker 1: of self instruction for the harmonica. And yes, I know
Speaker 1: my German pronunciation is terrible. Look my English pronunciation is terrible.
Speaker 1: I'm from the South. Just give me a break. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Mueller was a composer. He was a musician who attended
Speaker 1: uh St Thomas School in Leipzig, which was a school
Speaker 1: that Johann Sebastian Bach taught at. Though there's no way
Speaker 1: of knowing whether or not Mueller actually studied directly under
Speaker 1: Bach or not, there are a lot of sites I
Speaker 1: saw that listed Mueller as a pupil of Bach, but
Speaker 1: also had to acknowledge that, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: we have any record that he actually was taught directly
Speaker 1: by Bach, who was a true master of a composer.
Speaker 1: I don't have a whole lot more information about Mueller.
Speaker 1: I know that he was born in the early eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: but don't know when you died. I didn't find any
Speaker 1: record of that. And that apparently he played the harmonica
Speaker 1: and later wrote a book about how you could teach
Speaker 1: yourself how to play it. Also that he indicated that
Speaker 1: the music produced could make people feel an easy and
Speaker 1: irritable as if they had encountered a disappointing lady, which
Speaker 1: is a heck of a thing to say. And this
Speaker 1: reputation for the harmonica spread a little bit, and in fact,
Speaker 1: I think it's spread way more in the modern era
Speaker 1: than it did in the eighteenth century. Stories emerged about
Speaker 1: people reportedly suffering all sorts of negative health reactions after
Speaker 1: either listening to an armonica performance or actually playing the
Speaker 1: instrument themselves, and so the musical instrument began to be
Speaker 1: associated with this idea of of negative health impacts, and
Speaker 1: that the sound produced by the instrument, this ethereal singing sound,
Speaker 1: would cause these these health impacts somehow like that sound
Speaker 1: would somehow create these physiological reactions in certain people. So
Speaker 1: the glass armonica was blamed for pretty vague complaints, ranging
Speaker 1: from promoting irritability so it could like cause a a
Speaker 1: pair of spouses too uh to end up fighting with
Speaker 1: each other if they listened to an harmonica performance, for example,
Speaker 1: And it ranged all the way up to causing nervous disorders,
Speaker 1: usually poorly defined nervous disorders because people really didn't have
Speaker 1: an understanding of what the underlying issue was and they
Speaker 1: just kind of painted it with this overall vague term.
Speaker 1: But it all even included a an allegation that the
Speaker 1: harmonica was connected to the death of a child who
Speaker 1: attended a concert in Germany. Now I will add that
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any definitive source about this this death
Speaker 1: and the nature of it and what actually happened. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that happened at all. What I do
Speaker 1: know is there are a ton of different sources out
Speaker 1: there that mention it, but I couldn't find a primary
Speaker 1: source that actually talks about what really happened. Allegedly, a
Speaker 1: town in Germany even outlawed the harmonica because of its
Speaker 1: relationship with causing these sorts of negative health impacts. I
Speaker 1: will say that from what I could tell, it looked
Speaker 1: like this reputation was pretty much confined to a region
Speaker 1: within Germany. So maybe this was just a very localized
Speaker 1: superstition more than any sort of actual effect that was
Speaker 1: really produced by the armonica. There was also a hypothesis
Speaker 1: going around that perhaps ill effects on armonica players weren't
Speaker 1: because of the sound being produced. It wasn't that the
Speaker 1: notes were somehow disturbing the humors inside the human body,
Speaker 1: but rather that the bowls were made out of lead glass,
Speaker 1: kind of like the glass you would find and say
Speaker 1: stained glass windows. And it's true, lead it's of is
Speaker 1: toxic right if you consume lead. First of all, it
Speaker 1: accumulates in your body if you don't get rid of it,
Speaker 1: and so it can build up over time to becoming
Speaker 1: a toxic level, and you can get lead poisoning. But
Speaker 1: just touching lead glass is not likely to cause problems.
Speaker 1: If you were to drink from a lead glass, that
Speaker 1: could actually cause issues because lead could conceivably leach into
Speaker 1: whatever liquid you're drinking, especially if you have like some
Speaker 1: sort of acidic drink or hot drink in there. You
Speaker 1: might end up consuming some lead as you drink, so
Speaker 1: you should not use lead glass to make glassware out
Speaker 1: of And like I said, that lead will stick around
Speaker 1: in your body, so even if you're just getting a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of it each time, over the course of
Speaker 1: your life, it can get to a point where you
Speaker 1: can actually start to encounter symptoms of lead poisoning just
Speaker 1: because you've you've over time consumed enough of it to
Speaker 1: have that toxicity manifest But again, playing the class armonica
Speaker 1: with your fingers would not likely cause such problems. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe there'd be a way of having lead accumulated on
Speaker 1: your fingertips, and if you're not washing your hands at all,
Speaker 1: then perhaps you could start consuming it, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a long shot. It's not like just playing the harmonica
Speaker 1: would make you sick from exposure to lead. Maybe if
Speaker 1: you ate your armonica that would be a different story.
Speaker 1: It would also be a hell of a story because
Speaker 1: those things were pretty darn big and you're eating glass.
Speaker 1: So not that that's unheard of, there are people who
Speaker 1: have done it. But yeah, that that's one way you
Speaker 1: could get lead poisoning, although you might have some other
Speaker 1: more acute issues to worry about before the lead poisoning
Speaker 1: sets in. I wanted to give a shout out for
Speaker 1: another podcast I mentioned that earlier, and that podcast is Sawbones,
Speaker 1: a marital tour of Misguided Medicine, hosted by Dr Sidney
Speaker 1: McElroy and her husband, Justin McElroy of the mcilroys, of
Speaker 1: my brother and my brother there in me. In fact,
Speaker 1: I almost forgot his name there for a second. I
Speaker 1: had to think, who's the oldest brothers? Justin and uh?
Speaker 1: And they do a podcast called Sawbones where they go
Speaker 1: into various medical related stories throughout history, usually to kind
Speaker 1: of unveil when we were just completely off track or
Speaker 1: sometimes when we accidentally found our way on the right
Speaker 1: pathway as we were learning more about medicine. They did
Speaker 1: a full episode about the Glass Armonica. I recommend listening
Speaker 1: to that one. It came out actually almost a year
Speaker 1: ago today. Came out in early February of two So
Speaker 1: definitely check that out if you want to hear more.
Speaker 1: They have a great show, and I think Dr Sydney
Speaker 1: is fantastic at explaining medical matters in a way that's
Speaker 1: really easy to understand. She does for medicine what I
Speaker 1: try to do for technology. So yeah, check that out.
Speaker 1: But I really want to talk about this because again,
Speaker 1: I was just listening to that Ben Franklin song and
Speaker 1: it popped into my head and I just thought, what
Speaker 1: a curious story, ranging from the the inventiveness of the
Speaker 1: musical instrument itself and the simplicity of its mechanism, I mean,
Speaker 1: a very simple belt driven rotational wheel that turns the
Speaker 1: stack of bowls so that you can play them, and
Speaker 1: then the very weird reputation it got later on. Plus
Speaker 1: it's connected to a founding father of the United States.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just kind of like, so such a
Speaker 1: weird story that I felt that I wanted to to
Speaker 1: do a quick tech Stuff tinbits on it. Hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this. If you have suggestions for future topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on tech Stuff, please reach out to me.
Speaker 1: One way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff hs W. Another way
Speaker 1: to do that is to download the I Heart Radio app.
Speaker 1: You can download it for free on Android or iOS,
Speaker 1: and once you have it downloaded, you just type in
Speaker 1: tech Stuff in the little search bar that'll take you
Speaker 1: to the text a page within the I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: app and you'll see there's a little microphone icon. If
Speaker 1: you click on that, you can leave a voice message
Speaker 1: up to thirty seconds and like, let me know what
Speaker 1: you would like to hear in future episodes and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.