valmhast vartin iolanda
Candi Ruman
With family origins in New Jersey, crumb cake has always had a special place in my heart. Breakfast, dessert, or any time of day! But living in Massachusetts, I realized that if I wanted authentic "crumb-heavy" crumb cake, I would have to bake it myself.
With 2/3 of every bite consisting of mounds of colossal melt-in-your-mouth crumbs. And the bottom layer of moist cake made with fresh eggs, pure vanilla, and sour cream. It's unlike anything you've ever tasted and you'll be hooked after your first bite!
Growing up in an Italian family, our lives always revolved around food. I acquired my love of cooking & baking from my Mom, Rosie. As far back as I can remember, our house was filled with wonderful smells from the kitchen. From the Sunday sauce simmering all day on the stove, to fresh baked cookies, cakes, and pies. I would watch, listen, and help... always holding on to those lessons from my Mom. And now I share them with my wife & three sons (and all of you) on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
In 1895, Cahill registered his first patent for the telharmonium, which he himself described as a machine for producing and spreading electronic music. The telharmonium can in fact be considered the first significant electronic instrument.
He worked on developing the instrument, also called the Dynamophon, for 20 years. His ambitious goal was to construct the perfect instrument, no less, with perfect tones that were mechanically controlled with scientific precision. The telharmonium let players imitate different instruments: organ, piano, and violin.
Cahill, who had designed mechanisms for pianos, organs, and typewriters up to this point, was now planning something big: the design of an electronic construction that could produce a multitude of different tones. An instrument that would stand in a central location, and its music would be simultaneously transmitted to thousands of telephones in apartments and houses. Cahill's vision was that music should no longer be reserved for the upper echelons of society who could afford to attend a performance. Instead, everyone should be able to enjoy a live concert. Dial-a-music.
Pictured here: the telephone by Philipp Reis of 1863 from the Deutsches Museum collection.
Gray created quite a stir with his Musical Telegraph in a telegraphic concert on April 2, 1877. A piano with 16 keys installed in a Western Union office in Philadelphia transmitted music to the Steinway Hall in New York. The sounds played in the auditorium were reproduced by 16 wooden pipes 90 miles away.
But there were also crafty inventors in Europe as well, such as Clment Ader in Paris. He developed the so-called Thtrophone (theater phone), which he used to transmit musical pieces and theatrical productions via telephone.
In contrast to Gray's instrument which could only create simple, hard, choppy tones, Cahill could use his generators to create electrical pulses and complex sound compositions from individual tones, including their accompanying, quietly resonating overtones. Just to make sure all of the above, with all of its timbres, was received by listeners on the other end of the line without loss, it needed a whole lot of power.
Cahill transported the huge device to New York in 30 goods wagons and built it in his bizarre Telharmonic Hall on Broadway. Approximately 900 astounded visitors arrived on September 26, 1906 for a first look during its premier concert. Four concerts a day were held, but the real main attraction were the telephone transmissions. In an interview beforehand, Cahill announced that New Yorkers could listen in on the sounds of the telharmonium 24 hours a day for a subscription fee of 5 dollars a month. An early predecessor of the streaming service. It mostly played classics by Bach, Chopin, Grieg, and Rossini.
Hotels had to pay more. Namely 10 dollars a day. Restaurants 3 dollars. However, for many locals like the Waldorf-Astoria or Caf Martin on the corner of 5th Avenue and 26th Street, which had previously booked whole orchestras with up to 30 musicians for light music to entertain guests, it was a great deal. For musicians, not so much.
The Telharmonium was a huge sensation for a good three years. Cahill boldly advertised it in newspapers with the slogan The Music of the Year 2000. Even the great Italian composer Giacomo Puccini was highly interested and paid a visit to the Telharmonic Hall. Writer Mark Twain also wrote about it. "Every time I see or hear a new wonder like this I have to postpone my death right off," raved the author. "I couldn't possibly leave the world until I have heard this again and again." He even wanted streetlights connected to the telharmonium to play the funeral march during his funeral.
The boom soon subsided. This was down to the device itself, which increasingly went out of tune, as well as the performance. The musicians worked in harmony and hardly had time to practice. It was more quantity over quality, which could never end well.
There were also often unwanted disruptions during transmissions when the signal jumped over to a neighboring wire. New Yorkers who just wanted to phone somebody were suddenly subject to music. The complaints piled up, and the telephone company terminated the contract.
But Cahill never let himself be fazed by this. He gained a partner in the knowledgeable Lee De Forest, a pioneer in the area of radio technology.
So, what happened next? Cahill continued to try out technical innovations, experimenting with devices such as typewriters. George, his younger brother by two years, achieved greater success after asking himself why games always had to be played during the day, and whether there was a way to illuminate playing fields and stadiums during the night as well. So he invented the floodlight, which he demonstrated for the first time in 1909 in Crosley Field, a baseball stadium in Cincinnati. It was still too weak to use during regular games, however. It took 26 years until May 24, 1935 for a Major League Baseball game to be played at night under floodlight.
The one and only President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed the button to light up the stadium with 632 duplex lights from the White House in Washington, 500 miles further east. The fact that the Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2 to 1 before an audience of 20,000 is secondary.
Cahill was not to live to see the floodlight premiere in 1935. In the 1920s, he had still sent his "Cahill Giant Duplex Generator" from his company at 519 West 45th Street in New York across the country to illuminate skating rinks and amusement parks, even parking lots, harbors, and gas stations. New York's legendary Yankee Stadium hosted a baseball game under floodlights for the first time in 1946.
Thaddeus, however, continued to experiment. At the start of the 1930s, another commercially viable idea came to him: audio synchronization for silent films. Subscribers would be sent film reels, and they could watch them while listening to the recorded track at the same time via radio signal. However, this wasn't that successful either. On April 12, 1934, Cahill, who most recently lived on 316 West 84th Street, unexpectedly died from sudden cardiac death. He was 66 years old.
There are no existing tone recordings of the telharmonium, which in the end was most likely scrapped. However, this colossal machine is still considered the predecessor of an instrument that would triumphantly enter the stage decades later: the Hammond organ.
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