I am from a small town in Alabama, USA.  I have been doing research
on water organs for about two years.  I am very close to starting
construction on one.  I first started doing research for organs during
the Renaissance period.  From there I traced the organ back to the
earliest times.  My local library, through interlibrary loans, has
been very helpful.  All total I have reviewed about twenty books on
the subject.

I am now concentrating on building a replica of the "Bird and Owl"
mechanism first thought up by Hero of Alexander and later refined by
Issac de Caus around 1590.  I have vacillated between the wind created
by an aeolian chamber, wind created by what I call the cistern method
(falling water, usually going into three or four cisterns stacked on
top of each other, the Hero of Alexander method), and wind created by
a bellows, which seems to be the main method used by Issac de Caus; see
Wilton Garden: "New and Rare Inventions of Water-Works".  The bellows
method seems to be one to be that would be the less complicated, which
I have to take into account as this will be my first.

I started seeing the name Kircher pop up in some of the research and
going down that path led me to you.  It is my understanding, according
to a book by C. F. Abdy Williams (The story of the Organ) written in
1903, and I quote: "Kircher gives a number of diagrams, and devotes
many pages to the construction of these organs, showing how to transfer
musical notation to the barrels, how to work the bellows, and how to
cause the whole instrument to be played by a water wheel".

This information seems to exactly what I need to know to proceed.  The
problem is I cannot find an English translation.  Do you know of one
or do you know of any other information that may cut down on the vast
amount of time to do trial and error in building a barrel organ, using
a water wheel for power and also to create wind by the bellows method?

Do you think the bellows method is the right choice?

Joe Husbands
Wedowee, Alabama

 [ "The Story of the Organ", by C.F. Abdy Williams, published in 1903 by
 [ Walter Scott Publishing and Charles Scribner's Sons, reprinted 1974,
 [ also reprinted by Singing Tree Press, Detroit, 1972.  See also
 [ http://users.ipa.net/~tanker/organs.htm
 [
 [ Ref.: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-04172003-005110/
 [ In her 2002 dissertation entitled "Technology in Society: The Pipe
 [ Organ in Early Modern England", doctoral student Caroline Woodell
 [ Cagle, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, writes:
 [
 [  "Nor does machinery mesh with magic.  Thorndike's chapter on
 [  'Artificial Magic and Technology' summarizes the works of several
 [   seventeenth-century authors who have written on the subject of
 [   mechanical devices.  Among these are manuscripts by Athanasius
 [   Kircher and Salomon de Caus, both of whom describe numerous
 [   curious, amusing and ordinary artifacts, including pipe organs."
 [
 [ -- Robbie