Paris, May 3d 1997

In the May 1st Digest, Robbie wrote in addition to a contribution I made
(When was first used the expression "Musique mecanique" ?) :

> [ Editor's note: From "A Dictionary of Musical Terms" (1895)
> [
> ["Melograph -- Name of various mechanical devices for recording the music
> [ played upon a  pianoforte.  One of the latest and most successful is
> [ the "electric hand", or Phonautograph (invented by Fenby, in England),
> [ in which the pressure on the digitals [the keys] closes an electric
> [ circuit, effecting a record on paper as in the Morse system of
> [ telegraphy.  A cardboard stencil forming an exact copy of the record
> [ can be made to reproduce the music when placed in the Melotrope, a
> [ mechanical attachment to a pianoforte by means of which the digitals
> [ are depressed as if by the player's fingers."
> [
> [ I've not seen "mechanical music" in this old book.
> [
> [ Robbie

Of course Robbie has not seen it, because I am speaking about a very
precise article in French, in the French Journal La Nature, dated June 25th
1887, about the melographe and the melotrope patented (?) by the Frenchman
Carpentier who presented his invention before the French "Academie des
Sciences". (Too many French there, sorry ...).

What I am really interested in, is to find when the expression "Musique
Mecanique" was first used in French, German, English or Dutch ...
Thanks for your answers !

Best regards, and to Robbie, Carole, and his orchestra : a very happy
travel to England, with or without musique mecanique.

Philippe

Philippe Rouille
(Paris, France)
rouille@cnam.fr
http://www.cnam.fr/museum/musica_mecanica/