MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS - ORGAN
Our museum holds a small collection of musical instruments and the organ pictured above is a fine example. This organ is vintage from 1905 and was once in old St. Paul's on Hinemoa Street, Paraparaumu and was donated by Rev. Dr. Ross Wards when the church became the Lady Chapel in the Wellington Cathedral. Instruments were a big part of life before television and most households had a piano or organ, with some or all of the family learning to play.
His Masters Voice Gramophone
Date: circa 1930.
Title: "His Masters Voice" brand hand wound gramophone
Description: Made by The Gramophone Company Ltd Hayes, Middlesex, England (1897 — 1931) with an oak case with metal working parts and a canvas covered front speaker. The crank handle winds the spring driven motor. The speaker horn is housed in the base.
In New Zealand this gramophone was sold by The Bristol Piano Co. which was a large nationwide company that imported pianos and gramophones from the United Kingdom.
Cheney Gramophone
Date: 1916 - 1918
Title: Cheney Gramophone (donated by the Goodman family) - Hepplewhite Model
Description: Originally purchased by Jack Plimmer this Gramophone was used by the Plimmer family over many years at the farm homestead located in Reikorangi and later in the farm wool shed which was used for social occasions and dances in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Jack’s son Barry Plimmer passed the radio on in the late 1960’s to Rick Goodman. [founder of Goodman Contractors Ltd.]
Rick Goodman had the player fully restored and it remained in the Goodman family until being gifted to the Kapiti Coast Museum in 2024.
Phonograph vs Gramophone
The terms Phonograph and Gramophone are often used interchangeably but under the true definition they are quite different. The Phonograph came earlier and it operates by using a grooved wax cylinder.
A Gramophone operates by using a flat disc and this lead directly to the record player which electrically amplifies the sound produced from the grooved record. Despite this distinction in terminology companies such as Cheney continued to use the term Phonograph to describe their record players. This was largely because the term Phonograph was more widely recognised at the time.
Phonograph:
Name Origin: The term "phonograph" is derived from the Greek words "phono" (sound) and "graph" (writing), meaning "sound writing."
Inventor: Thomas Edison in 1877.
Mechanism: Uses a cylinder to record and play sound. The sound was recorded as indentations or grooves on a cylindrical surface.
Ref:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder
Gramophone:
Name Origin: Derived from the Greek words "gramma" (letter) and "phono" (sound), meaning "written sound."
Inventor: Emile Berliner in 1887.
Mechanism: Uses a flat, round disc instead of cylinders for recording and playback.
Sound Reproduction: A lateral-cut groove on the disc is read by a stylus. Berliner's gramophone popularized the use of records as the standard medium.
Camera
Date: circa 1958.
Title: Bell and Howell Cine Camera
Description: Cine Camera, gray metal enclosed in a brown leather case. On the surface it has "G B Bell & Howell 624 EE Autoset". The Autoset takes 25 feet spools of double 8mm film. As well as taking 16 frames per second, the camera can also take single frames.