The Douglas Fitzpatrick gramophone

[Orchorsol]

How astonished and excited we were when, earlier this year, a convoluted series of events led to the discovery that this legendary machine still exists (albeit with certain problems). The attached document should be self-explanatory.

I would like to apologise to our esteemed friends and acquaintances, and to the gramophone community in general, for keeping this under wraps until now. There have been good and necessary reasons, however. Firstly, we have done our best to ensure that the machine will remain safeguarded, i.e. to prevent the risk of it being broken up, or otherwise being lost to research and heritage. Secondly, the Audio Engineering Society, in whose journal the 1970s paper by Percy Wilson and his son Professor Geoffrey Wilson was published (this being the paper which, through a circuitous route, led us to the instrument itself) expressed great interest in publishing our paper, which would have had copyright implications, and it is only recently that our correspondence with them has reached a point where we have decided against that route at present.

Thanks to Chunny and Graham for leading into this from the thread about George Overstall. The timeliness is striking - serendipity has seemed to accompany us at every step of the way with all this!

[Garret]

This is amazing. Thank you very much for sharing!

[Nat]

I can only echo the thanks of others - fascinating!

[epigramophone]

Yes, a fascinating story and very well researched.

I cannot help wondering, however, whether there is an optimum size for a horn and what that size needs to be. No doubt the mathematicians will tell us. Could this machine perhaps have been a step too far?

We cannot really judge unless and until it is fully restored, and Graham is the man to do it. Let's hope the present custodians will be co-operative.

[2Bdecided]

Thank you so much for sharing this.

I saw this gramophone at Holkham when I was a kid. There was a large selection of bygones, but needless to say this was my favourite!

I went looking for it on the internet last year, and was surprised not to find it. Given the fact it was on public display, I felt sure it would have made its way onto YouTube. I did find Holkham's promo video online - click "view video presentation" on the left of this page...
http://www.holkham.co.uk/html/bygones.html
...you get quite a tour of the museum. At 0:30 there's a shot of the stables, and I was sure that when I visited the gramophone was in one of those stalls (back right in that shot, I think) but there's no sign of it in that video. I now see from the second photograph in your article that my memory wasn't playing tricks on me. You entered at the back left, and there was the gramophone. Quite a sight!


When I visited, they played the gramophone a lot, and I was happy to stand and listen - and go around the museum a second time later in the day to listen again. They had lots of records, some of them (I thought at the time) too modern to play on an acoustic gramophone. I got talking to the man and it turned out they had more records than needles. They only had a few tens of steel needles, and they were re-using them and (I think) sometimes re-sharpening them. He described the needles as real "groove strainers", and even at that age I was horrified, which is why that phrase has stuck with me. When I got home I think I sent them the address of somewhere they could buy new steel needles from. I don't think I'd seen a fibre needle or really understood EMGs at the time.

The wooden horn was described as being made by a local craftsman. They had a newspaper article there which reported its installation at Holkham. At least, those are two things I remember. It was decades ago and I was a child, so what I remember and what actually happened might be two very different things!

It's interesting to read your comment reporting "a strong impression that the wider reaches of the bell are ineffectual" because at the time I couldn't hear any benefit - the outside planks of that large horn didn't seem to be doing anything, other than getting in the way of the man changing the records. I remember it being surprisingly quiet, though that may just have been surprisingly quiet considering the size to my young self.

Anyway, thank you Andrew, Graham and Ian for solving this mystery for me.

Do you know why they took it out of service? It seemed very popular back then.

Cheers,
David.

[Orchorsol]

It's interesting to read your comment reporting "a strong impression that the wider reaches of the bell are ineffectual" because at the time I couldn't hear any benefit - the outside planks of that large horn didn't seem to be doing anything, other than getting in the way of the man changing the records. I remember it being surprisingly quiet, though that may just have been surprisingly quiet considering the size to my young self.

Thanks David! It's great to hear from someone who has actually seen and heard the beast. I think we can be certain that the whole bell would be effective were the entire speaking length correct acoustically - whether to the original design or Fitzpatrick's final configuration.

[emgcr]

Thank you for your comments David and it is good to know that at least one person has this wonderful instrument firmly imprinted on his memory !

I think the reason why it is no longer on show has to do with staff shortages as much as anything else. The long-standing curator who had the important knowledge/enthusiasm died a year or so ago and priorities have been reviewed. This process is on-going which is why we are very keen to raise general awareness, hopefully to ensure a viable and successful long-term future.

Here is a private link showing the gramophone in action but please bear in mind that the output via YouTube is actually seriously misleading. The sound in the room was low volume and a long way from the magical "holographic" reproduction we all know and love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAkUIty1WNI

[Steve]

That's interesting. It does actually sound very good in the video although I appreciate that "in the room" it probably does sound particularly underwhelming, especially considering its generous proportions.

Can anyone please explain why the earlier incarnation had a conduit running through the floor? Surely the easier option might have been to build a new deeper cabinet or simply run conduit under the cabinet?

Given the age of the horn, was it the intention of the maker to demonstrate the potential for improved sound via an acoustic method of reproduction as opposed to the more commonly accepted (from the 1950's onwards) electrical reproduction?

Does anyone know anything about the house with exponential concrete horn constructed within its gable end?

[Orchorsol]

Can anyone please explain why the earlier incarnation had a conduit running through the floor? Surely the easier option might have been to build a new deeper cabinet or simply run conduit under the cabinet?

Given the age of the horn, was it the intention of the maker to demonstrate the potential for improved sound via an acoustic method of reproduction as opposed to the more commonly accepted (from the 1950's onwards) electrical reproduction?

It was the later incarnation that went below floorboard level - the original did not. At some point Fitzpatrick increased the acoustic length by introducing the longer and more gradually flaring section between the cabinet and the horn proper. It appears that the dimensions/geometry of the wooden horn (orientation of both horn mouth and inlet), with the constraints of ceiling height, meant that the easiest option available to him was to cut out some of the floorboards. Otherwise the output of horn would have ended up more towards the horizontal, or even inclined upward.

We haven't discovered any reliable note of his exact intentions, to my knowledge. Fitzpatrick seems to have been a bon viveur par excellence, if you'll excuse the mixture of terms there... Maybe it was just his love of these things and "because he could". Perhaps Graham or others can comment?

[VintageTechnologies]

It's interesting to read your comment reporting "a strong impression that the wider reaches of the bell are ineffectual" because at the time I couldn't hear any benefit - the outside planks of that large horn didn't seem to be doing anything, other than getting in the way of the man changing the records. I remember it being surprisingly quiet, though that may just have been surprisingly quiet considering the size to my young self.

Thanks David! It's great to hear from someone who has actually seen and heard the beast. I think we can be certain that the whole bell would be effective were the entire speaking length correct acoustically - whether to the original design or Fitzpatrick's final configuration.

Apart from the issue of correct theoretical construction, do you suppose a large enough horn finally reaches a point of diminishing returns or even regression?