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The Musical Telegraph Was Invented
Built by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray. He accidentally discovered the sound generation from a self-vibrating electromagnetic circuit, then he invented a basic single-note oscillator. -
The Teleharmonium was Invented
The Teleharmonium added the capability of addative synthesis. -
Amplifying Vacuum Tube
Lee De Forest's invention allowed the construction of many other types of electronic instruments. -
Audion Piano
Invented by Le De Forest -
Theremin
Invented by Léon Theremin in 1920 -
Ondes Martenot
Invented by Maurice Martenot in 1928 -
Trautonium
Invented by Friedrich Trautwein in 1929 -
Novachord
The Hammond Novachord released in 1939, was an electronic keyboard that used a frequency-divider for sound generation, with vibratos, filter, resonator-network and a dynamic envelope controller -
Electronic Sackbut
In the late 1940s, Canadian inventor and composer, Hugh Le Caine invented Electronic Sackbut, which provided the earliest realtime control of three aspects of sound (volume, pitch and timbre), corresponding to today's touch-sensitive keyboard, pitch & modulation controllers -
RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer
RCA developed the first programmable sound synthesizer, RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, and installed it to Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1957. -
Portable Synths
In 1961, Harald Bode wrote a paper exploring the concept of self-contained portable modular synthesizer using newly emerging transistor technology -
Moog
Robert Moog released the first commercially available modern synthesizer in 1965.
