Trekking around ancestors of smart instruments
Charles Besnainou · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2017
In the present time, smart instruments are the ongoing revolution tying together acoustical instruments and computers. The concepts of electronic active control of structure are the heart of the process. The aim of this paper is to summarize more than one century of trials. Who remembers the “infinite sound” piano of Richard Eisenmann driven by electromagnetics and been touched, during the Industrial Art Exhibition in Munich in 1888, by Hermann von Helmholtz, and earlier the Pape’s enhanced piano with air blow? Some experiments revive the project as the E-bow dedicated for the steel-string guitar. Then, after a jump in the 1990’s as exercises for students on teaching feedback Proportional-Integral-Derivative analogical central heating regulator. On the cliff of the positive feedback applied for a xylophone bar, and so on just before numerical systems.