The Telharmonium

Recognized as one of the worlds first electronic instruments, the Teleharmonium was an organ-like device that used wheels to create synthetic tones and transmitted them over wires. Builtin in 1897, it was the largest electronic instrument in the world, weighing 200 tons and taking up an entire room. It was a system of keyboards and foot pedals and could reproduce other instruments. The original intention was to play music that could be broadcasted over telephone lines to the masses, but the idea took too much energy from the grid and the idea was scrapped, and it was destroyed. To this date, nothing remains of the original teleharmoniums, not even recordings.