Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (or Mälzel; August 15, 1772 – July 21, 1838) was a German inventor, engineer, and showman, best known for manufacturing a metronome and several music-playing automatons, and displaying a fraudulent chess machine.

Johann Nepomuk Maelzel ( 1772-1838 ) registered the metronome patent in 1815 after devising the musical scale for a device largely constructed and invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel a year earlier.

Johann Nepomuk Maelzel ( 1772-1838 ) registered the metronome patent in 1815 after devising the musical scale for a device largely constructed and invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel a year earlier.

2021年8月12日 · The metronome, as we know it, was patented by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel in 1815. Yet, Maelzel’s metronome cannot be truly credited to Maelzel since most of the mechanism, including the addition of a weighted counter pendulum, was actually designed by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel in Amsterdam.

2021年12月8日 · This chapter begins by offering a reception history of Maelzel, the metronome, and his automata, and exploring the cultural significances underlying his clockwork creations across the Industrial Age. As numerous accounts maintain, Maelzel’s automata projected decidedly inhuman performance practices.

Maelzel’s metronome used an escapement (think of the toothed wheel that makes a watch tick) to transfer power from a wound-up spring to a weighted pendulum. Each swing of the pendulum produced an audible tick, and users could adjust a dial to control the tempo of the ticking.

The mechanism of spring driven cogs and wheels, escapement and pendulum has changed little in close to 200 years since the original patent was developed by Maelzel in 1815.

Through the development and marketing of a compact mechanical metronome, he helped to provide the very practical means for musical tempi indications to become numerical rather than descriptive and it is in part thanks to Maelzel that most compositions today include a precise indication of tempo.

Crafting a description and an accompanying illustration for a French patent, Maelzel’s initial narrative amounted to no more than a few short paragraphs, explaining the various elements of the spring-driven movement: its main 150-tooth wheel, a 33-tooth escape wheel, its deadbeat escapement and weights and its beats-per-minute calibration as ...

2018年5月30日 · Yet the Maelzel metronome remains the classic, with its familiar pyramidal wooden case, graduated scale and a perpendicular thin metal strip acting on the double pendulum principle (a pivoted oscillating rod weighted at both ends).