MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 95 



NEW MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. 



The successful efforts of art-mechanics in music have for a long time been 

 exclusively shown in improving the old instruments of past centuries, but 

 not in .adding new instruments of high value and rank to the list. We have 

 at last recently examined an instrument, made by Messrs. Hill, of New York, 

 which is essentially novel, and, making every allowance for the inevitable 

 deficiencies of a first out-worked attempt of the principle involved, the result 

 is promising and brilliant. The inventors call it a keyed harp ; whereas, 

 its qualities are precisely those which the harp has not, namely: a sus- 

 tained sound. It is played upon like the piano-forte, and, while the tone- 

 stroke has not the readiness, or crispness, or vitality of that instrument, the 

 sustained vibration is much greater, when not arrested by mechanical means. 

 The note cannot be shaded after once sounded; but the continuation of the 

 vibration, we are assured by the inventors, can, under the extended applica- 

 tion of a second and improved manufacture, be secured for a whole min- 

 ute. The instrument, we heard, wants power, which the inventors say 

 can be more than doubled by doubling the size of the constituents of its 

 sonority; but it has great sweetness in fact, too saccharine, if anything 

 and not characterized by vigor. 



The principle is that of a vibrator, or fork, with the prongs applied to an 

 aperture in a box or cell. The vibrators have prongs, from one inch to ten 

 inches long, the handles of which are gently, but firmly, held to their places 

 over the hammers and to the cells, which cells are of as many sizes as are 

 the forks. To the prongs of the longer vibrators are wires to receive the 

 hammers, and wings to enable the prongs of the vibrators to take efficient 

 hold on, and thoroughly cause to sound, the air in the cells. The damper- 

 frames and damper-levers are at the back ends of the keys ; and the sound is 

 stopped by the fall of the damper against, or near, the ends of the prongs. The 

 damping is perfect, as is also the pedal movement. The covering of the 

 hammers differs much from, and is simpler than that of the piano. The 

 strength of the ordinary piano action is all that can be desired in this; and 

 the inventors would have had much more tone and better adjustment of 

 parts had they used vibrators of double the size of the present ones. A very 

 great difficulty has been so to arrange the parts as to bring them into a con- 

 venient compass, as regards the size of the case, and to get sufficient sound- 

 distance, and the best forms and sizes of cells to fit the case and keys, and to 

 produce the right quality and quantity of tone all of which the inventors 

 aver they can now master to perfection. N. Y. Tribune. 



ORGAN BLOWN BY WATER POWER. 



The following is a description of the means employed in the Cathedral of 

 Carlisle (England) for blowing the organ by the application of water power: 



The water is collected in two cisterns or tanks, placed in the roof over the 

 south aisle, and is drawn from the reservoir supplying the town. From 

 these cisterns the water passes down a pipe, into two cylinders, like those of 

 a steam-engine, standing in a hole, apparently dug to obtain a greater fall 

 of the water. Exactly over these cylinders are two feeders, made like the 

 reservoirs of the organ bellows, each having a diaphragm, or middle leaf, 

 which is moved up and clown by means of the pistons. Attached to these 

 leaves are two rods, which pass down to two beautifully- made and very 



