Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — PLAYS ON PINS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PLAYS ON PINS.

Bow • Bright Young Girt Kztract* Mtuic from Them. There is a very pretty fable which has it that the plus that are lost every year are picked up by fairies, who hammer them out on elfin anvils into notes of music. There is some basis for this fiction, for plDs have a musical quality if you know how to bring it out. A young man, says a New York paper, discovered this fact the other evening when he heard a chorus of pins singing “Daisy Bell.” They were so arranged that they looked for all the world like a line of music taken from a book. They stood up on a pine board, each at a different height The spaces

between them were also of different widths. In touching the pins it was apparent that each of them was capable of producing but one sound. It was then observed that the sounds followed each other in subh a way as to perform that lively and popular air of “Daisy Bell” in a manner that was wonderfully pleasing. The young girl who had setup this amateur organ said it was easy enough for any one to make who had an ear for music. “All there is to it,” she said, “is to get a tune in your head, then drive a pin down in a board and keep driving and trying it till it sounds like the first note in the tune. Then stick up another for

the second note, and so on. To raise a pin to a higher note you hammer it down further, and to lower it you pull it up a little. When you want to go slow you put the pins a good ways apart, and when you want to go fast you plant them thicker.” The next day she set up a pin organ in circular form. She made one of those little whirligigs which spin around when they are held over a register or by a stove pipe, and then connected it by a string with a wheel. This wheel, as It turned, set an upright shaft in motion, and from this there projected a stick with a pin at the end. This was arranged as is shown In the cut, so that when it revolves the pin in the stick played upon the pins in the circle and rattled off “The Bowery” at a tremendous pace.

THE AMATECR ORGAN.

GRINDS OUT TONES.