Crookes' Cage
5.03
5.03
During the period from 1870 to 1871, the eminent Victorian scientist William Crookes (1832-1919) set up an experiment to test whether Daniel Dunglas Home used trickery to perform the feat of the self-playing accordion. Crookes purchased a new instrument for this purpose. He asked Home to hold it inside an open-topped bespoke cage made from wire mesh under the table (which was Home’s usual practice).
In some accounts of this experiment, an electrical current was passed through the apparatus to prevent, Crookes explained, any interference from an outside agency. In this respect, Crookes’ cage was not unlike a Faraday cage, invented by Michael Faraday (1791-1867). This was, similarly, formed by a mesh of conductive material. The electrical field caused by the charge distributed throughout cancelled the fields effect within the cage, thus protecting whatever was placed inside.
The composition comprises single notes played on a melodeon that have been adjusted for pitch and time to sound as though they are produced by a grand church organ. Periodically, the spit and crackle of electricity is heard above them. It ends with the repetition of a single note heard at its normal pitch and speed.
Home’s accordion would play the music of not only popular Victorian parlour songs but also solemn hymns. He had brought up in a Scottish Presbyterian family and converted to the Greek Orthodox faith later in life. The spirit-enabled instrument was, for him, no frivolous party trick but, rather, a sacred declaration and demonstration that the chasm between heaven and earth, God and humankind, and the dead and the living could be bridged.
In some accounts of this experiment, an electrical current was passed through the apparatus to prevent, Crookes explained, any interference from an outside agency. In this respect, Crookes’ cage was not unlike a Faraday cage, invented by Michael Faraday (1791-1867). This was, similarly, formed by a mesh of conductive material. The electrical field caused by the charge distributed throughout cancelled the fields effect within the cage, thus protecting whatever was placed inside.
The composition comprises single notes played on a melodeon that have been adjusted for pitch and time to sound as though they are produced by a grand church organ. Periodically, the spit and crackle of electricity is heard above them. It ends with the repetition of a single note heard at its normal pitch and speed.
Home’s accordion would play the music of not only popular Victorian parlour songs but also solemn hymns. He had brought up in a Scottish Presbyterian family and converted to the Greek Orthodox faith later in life. The spirit-enabled instrument was, for him, no frivolous party trick but, rather, a sacred declaration and demonstration that the chasm between heaven and earth, God and humankind, and the dead and the living could be bridged.