Herophon organ

Herophon organ
Wood and metal.
Measurements: 29 x 48 x 48 cm.
The Herophon is a mechanical reed organ very similar to the Ariston, already described, and patented by Ernest Paul Ehrlich. It was designed and manufactured by the company Euphonika Musikwerke, a company established, like many others of the same style, in Leipzig and run by the manufacturer Pietschmann. The difference between Ariston and Herophon was mainly in mechanization, since in the former, which played round perforated cardboard discs, it was precisely those discs that rotated, while in the Herophon the inner mechanism rotated circularly along the bottom of a square cardboard card encoded with the corresponding song. It is difficult to know the exact date of invention of the Herophon, but we do know the first time it appears in a legal text, precisely in a copyright case. A musician named Waldmann took various manufacturers to court on several occasions - the first in 1885 - on the grounds that the reproduction of melodies on cardboard discs infringed his rights as the "inventor" of the songs. The German courts did not always and not always rule in the same way for all instruments. In some cases, perhaps because of the use of particular instruments as examples, it was in favor of the author, and in others, when it was a matter of comparison with music boxes already in existence for a long time, the decision favored the instrument manufacturers. In any case, it was a matter of deciding whether or not an already recorded track could be reproduced, and not of judging an instrument. The terms used were "reprint" (which contravened the rules of various conventions in which the English copyright legislation of 1842 had been further improved) and "reproduction", which was more in line with the interchangeable media nature of records and considered them as "recorded" or "encoded" music and not "printed" music, since that term would have infringed the author's right to copy.

The Euphonika brand manufactured different models of Herophon, called Herophonette I and II, with 18 notes and Herophon III and IV, with 24 notes and a larger size (the IV was 51 x 51 x 32 cms.).