Codex Harmonicus III — De Machinis Musicis

Folio III of the Codex Harmonicus, a recovered-manuscript-style plate on invented instruments — the bowed keyboard, the drum of pinned cams, the folding paper organ, and a barrel-driven automaton.

What's inside

• The viola organista — a keyboard bowed by an endless band of horsehair — with a plan of its drive wheel and treadle
• A portative paper organ that folds, with its pipes, bellows and keys listed by weight
• The sliding-recorder pipe, and the gearing table for a two-drum mechanical instrument that never repeats its rhythm
• The plucking versus the bowed keyboard, and how a player's touch controls loudness on each
• A silver lyre shaped as a horse's skull, made as a gift and recorded in the 1499 inventory
• The economics of a barrel-organ automaton — its parts, their cost, and whether it can be said to play