A pyrophone, also known as a "fire/explosion organ" or "fire/explosion calliope" is a musical instrument in which notes are sounded by explosions, or similar forms of rapid combustion, rapid heating, or the like, such as burners in cylindrical glass tubes, creating light and sound. It was invented by physicist and musician Georges Frédéric Eugène Kastner (born 1852 in Strasbourg, France – died 1882 in Bonn, Germany), son of composer Jean-Georges Kastner, around 1870.
It is well known that if a flame of hydrogen gas be introduced within a glass or other tube, and if it be so placed as to be capable of vibrating, there is formed around this flame—that is to say, upon the whole of its enveloping surface—an atmosphere of hydrogen gas, which, in uniting with the oxygen in the air of the tube, burns in small portions, each composed of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen, the combustion of this mixture of gases producing a series of slight explosions or detonations.
If such a gaseous mixture, exploding in small portions at a time, be introduced at a point about one-third of the length of the tube from the bottom, and if the number of these detonations be equal to the number of vibrations necessary to produced a sound in the tube, all the acoustic conditions requisite to produce a musical tone are fulfilled.
This sound may be caused to cease either, first, by increasing or reducing the height of the flame, and consequently increasing or diminishing its enveloping surface, so as to make the number of detonations no longer correspond with the number of vibrations necessary to produce a musical sound in the tube, or, secondly, by placing the flame at such a height in the tube as to prevent the vibration of the enveloping film.
— Kastner's patent [2]
The pyrophone is similar to the steam calliope, but the difference is that in the calliope the combustion is external to the resonant cavity, whereas the pyrophone is an internal combustion instrument. The difference initially seems insignificant, but external combustion is what gives the calliope its staccato. Operating under the constant pressures of an external combustion chamber, the calliope merely directs exhaust (HB# 421.22: internal fipple flutes). By controlling the combustion specific to each resonant chamber, the pyrophone has, for better or worse, a greater range of variables in play when producing tones. In a purely mechanical (non-solenoid) calliope, the resulting pressures of external combustion result in between one and five pounds-force (4 and 22 N) of trigger pressure. In a mechanical pyrophone, trigger weight per key is related to comparatively lower backpressure of combustible gas. Again, the force of combustion happens in the resonance chamber; rather than controlling the exhaust of an explosion that has already happened in order to produce tones, the pyrophone controls the explosion to produce the tone.
Pyrophones originated in the 19th century. Byron Higgins, using hydrogen burning within the bottom of an open glass tube, [3] first pointed out that if flame is placed in a glass tube sound may be produced in 1777 and in 1818 Michael Faraday attributed the tones to very rapid explosions. [4] Physicist John Tyndall demonstrated that flame(s) in a tube may be made to sound if they are placed close to one third the length of the tube, the explosion occurs at a rate which matches the fundamental or one of the harmonics of the tube, and the volume of the flame is not too great. [1] Brewer, Moigno, and de Parville describe Kastner as having invented the instrument about twenty years before 1890, [5] and he filed a patent on Christmas Eve of 1874. [2] [6] Charles Gounod attempted to include the organ in his opera Jeanne d'Arc (1873) and the instrument was shown in the Paris Exhibition (1878). [3] Henry Dunant was a proponent, and Wendelin Weißheimer composed Five Sacred Sonnets for Voice, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Pyrophone and Piano (1880). [7]
Pyrophones are usually powered by propane, but gasoline powered mobile units have been built, to connect to automobile fuel intake manifolds and use the spark plugs and wiring, etc., to detonate one or more of the chambers. Hydrogen pyrophones are often made using upside-down glass test tubes as the combustion chambers. Different colors were probably not achieved in Kastner's time, but would be possible with the addition of salts to the flames. [7]
Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion does not always result in fire, because a flame is only visible when substances undergoing combustion vaporize, but when it does, a flame is a characteristic indicator of the reaction. While activation energy must be supplied to initiate combustion, the heat from a flame may provide enough energy to make the reaction self-sustaining.
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A calliope is an American and Canadian musical instrument that produces sound by sending a gas, originally steam or, more recently, compressed air, through large whistles—originally locomotive whistles.
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Jacques Dudon is a French just intonation composer and instrument builder. He is best known for developing a series of photosonic disk instruments in the 1980s that produced sound from modulated light.
A safety lamp is any of several types of lamp that provides illumination in places such as coal mines where the air may carry coal dust or a build-up of inflammable gases, which may explode if ignited, possibly by an electric spark. Until the development of effective electric lamps in the early 1900s, miners used flame lamps to provide illumination. Open flame lamps could ignite flammable gases which collected in mines, causing explosions; safety lamps were developed to enclose the flame to prevent it from igniting the explosive gases. Flame safety lamps have been replaced for lighting in mining with sealed explosion-proof electric lights, but continue to be used to detect gases.
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A splint is a simple piece of equipment used in scientific laboratories. Splints are typically long, thin strips of wood, about 6 inches (15 cm) long and ¼ inch (6 mm) wide, and are consumable but inexpensive. They are typically used for tasks such as lighting bunsen burners, as the length of the splint allows a flame to be lit without risk to the user's hand, should the burner flare back. Another use for splints are chemical identification of various gases, and splints are also used to teach simple chemical principles in schools and homes.
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A Zeldovich spontaneous wave, also referred to as Zeldovich gradient mechanism, is a reaction wave that propagates spontaneously in a reacting medium with a nonuniform initial temperature distribution when there is no interaction between different fluid elements. The concept was put forward by Yakov Zeldovich in 1980, based on his earlier work with his coworkers. The spontaneous wave is different from the other two conventional combustion waves, namely the subsonic deflagrations and supersonic detonations. The wave, although strictly speaking unrealistic because gasdynamic effects are neglected, is often cited to explain the yet-unsolved problem of deflagration to detonation transition (DDT).
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