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Gas Powered Antique Turntable

richardg

Admonishtrator
I just saw a bizarre record player on the Antiques Roadshow and missed a bit of the description but I think he said that the inventor 'proved' that passing the signal through burning gas improved the sound.

I've just googled it and the theory about the gas but came up with nothing...anyone know it?
 
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DEMONSTRATION of the Flamephone (,Scientific & Projections, Ltd,) By Mr. H. W. Heath, B.Sc.
The apparatus constitutes an improved gramophone, and employs a gas flame to improve the quality and intensity of reproduction.
The sound-box is divided by its diaphragm into two chambers, one of which communicates with a small horn while the other communicates with a supply pipe through which coal gas passes to a pair of vertical thin burner tubes. The tubes are perforated with a scries of holes from which the gas issues, the jets projecting over the mouth of the horn. On lighting the gas an increase in the volume of sound can be observed, and also a marked improvement in quality, the notes of lower pitch being accentuated. This effect has not been completely explained.
 
Its not April yet. Do you have to be careful with the type of gas? I would have thought it would require gas as made in the olde days from coal rather than natural gas? What about hydrogen or other combustable gases? lots of room for tinkering, how hyrogoen gas gives a sublime quality but coal gas has more punch and grit
 
Surely ( being aware of climate change ) hydrogen is the only choice.
You could play a old 78 belonging to David Attenborough and he’d be happy
with the result.
 
For a greener alternative there were compressed air gramophones as well which amplified by modulating a flow of pressurised air.
 


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