Word: melodeons
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Melodeon...
...your account of Cardinal O'Connell, TIME, Dec. 24, you say: "In another basement likewise ... he found a broken-down melodeon. Some of the pipes would sound, however. . . ." I do not know who told you that melodeons have "pipes," but it is a considerable mistake. They have reeds, and bellows, just like a common house-organ. They are encased, though, in a body similar to, but very much smaller than, the old-fashioned "square" piano. There are two treadles but they are not like the treadles of the organ, being rods run from the foot to the upright...
There is in my home today a melodeon of solid rosewood, purchased for my mother in 1860. It has had several new bellows, and minor repairs, and is in fine repair today. It is keyed to what used to be called "concert pitch," which, I understand is obsolete today, all instruments being tuned very much lower. My mother was offered $1,000 for it about 1887. It has a five octave, seven key keyboard, which is longer than the usual melodeon, which had, I believe, only five and a half octaves, or possibly only five...
...organ sounds its joyous diapason, Cardinal O'Connell will listen with the ears of a notable composer. In a basement he found the oldest Christian church in Rome. In another basement likewise, when he was a student at St. Charles College, Maryland, he found a broken-down melodeon. Some of the pipes would sound, however, and he sat there playing, lost to everything else, including his classes...
Reproduction mechanics are simple: while some Bible films are projected an operator works a melodeon at a speed to make sense with the picture. More complicated and more expensive, some films will themselves operate synchronized sound machinery, such as high-class cinema houses now have for their talking pictures...