Speaker 1: Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
Speaker 1: is Womanica. This month we're talking about women of sound.
Speaker 1: These women dominated the airwaves, innovating, documenting, and creating the
Speaker 1: audio landscape we live in today. Today's Womaniquin knew a
Speaker 1: thing or two about high fidelity sound. In fact, she
Speaker 1: put her own voice to paper through her invention of
Speaker 1: the idaphone. Her new instrument straddled the line between art
Speaker 1: and science, sound and picture. Let's talk about Margaret Watts Hughes.
Speaker 1: Margaret was born in Douless, Wales in the eighteen forties.
Speaker 1: At a young age, she discovered her gift for singing.
Speaker 1: Her voice was so promising that local foundations pulled money
Speaker 1: for her to get professional training. When she was around
Speaker 1: seventeen years old, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of
Speaker 1: Music in London. Margaret grew up as a young woman
Speaker 1: of Welsh society. She continued singing, got married and founded
Speaker 1: a boy's home. Margaret was also deeply religious and showed
Speaker 1: that devotion in her music. She wrote Welsh church hymns
Speaker 1: and always opted for a religious gathering overperforming in a concert.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen eighties, Margaret found a new medium for
Speaker 1: her singing visual art. Margaret heard about physicist and musician
Speaker 1: Ernst Claudney and his work making Cladney figures patterns formed
Speaker 1: by resonance. By running a bow along a metal plate,
Speaker 1: he could create intricate geometric patterns. Margaret realized she could
Speaker 1: make her own patterns by visualizing the intensity and variety
Speaker 1: of her own voice. Margaret put together a prototype to experiment.
Speaker 1: She stretched a rubber membrane over a large receiving chamber
Speaker 1: and then ran a tube into it. On top of
Speaker 1: the rubber, she laid sand or some other type of powder.
Speaker 1: Then she sang into the other end of the tube.
Speaker 1: It looked kind of like an oddly proportioned pipe. At first,
Speaker 1: the contraption was just a way to see her voice,
Speaker 1: to watch the grains scatter on a sour note, and
Speaker 1: see how far she could get the particles to go.
Speaker 1: But one day in May of eighteen eighty five, she
Speaker 1: noticed something new. She scattered the powder atop the rubber,
Speaker 1: and instead of belting, sang a mellow tune. As she
Speaker 1: held a note. She watched the powder bounce, bounce, bounce,
Speaker 1: into a formation, as if the grains were drawn to
Speaker 1: those spots on the membrane. It looked like a flower.
Speaker 1: Margaret resolved to find more forms. Depending on how loud
Speaker 1: her voice was, what pitch she sang, and how she
Speaker 1: sang it, Margaret could get the sand to form various
Speaker 1: complex shapes in response to her song, realistic pansies and ferns,
Speaker 1: psychedelic landscapes, undulating serpents, trees with delicate brand whispers. Margaret
Speaker 1: also added liquid to the rubber membrane, which made the
Speaker 1: effects even greater. A loud note sent the liquid up
Speaker 1: in a spray like a fountain. A gentle hum sparked
Speaker 1: tiny ripples across the pool. Margaret had invented the idaphone.
Speaker 1: That was what she called the contraption. She called the
Speaker 1: geometric figures. The idaphone made voice figures. They were imprints
Speaker 1: of her voice. Once she'd gotten a sense of what
Speaker 1: voice figures she could make, Margaret continued experimenting. She placed
Speaker 1: a dollup of pigment on the center of the rubber.
Speaker 1: Then she used her voice to move the pigment as
Speaker 1: she had the sand and the powder, ushering the color
Speaker 1: into circles and patterns. Her voice was like a paintbrush,
Speaker 1: soft notes to spread the color, a crescendo to intensify
Speaker 1: the pigment's path, and if something didn't look quite right,
Speaker 1: a small dominuendo would return and the paint back to
Speaker 1: its original spot. In eighteen ninety one, Margaret published her
Speaker 1: first findings of Voice Figures in the Century An Illustrated magazine.
Speaker 1: She accompanied her explanation of the idaphone with schematics and
Speaker 1: pictures of the resulting voice figures. By pressing glass over
Speaker 1: the idaphone, Margaret captured what she called impression figures, essentially
Speaker 1: taking a snapshot of a song. They look almost like
Speaker 1: modern three D computer generated images. Margaret created a handheld
Speaker 1: version of the idaphone and conducted demonstrations in London. She
Speaker 1: even became the first woman to present a scientific invention
Speaker 1: in front of the prestigious Royal Society. Margaret had brought
Speaker 1: her voice into the material realm. She decorated the walls
Speaker 1: of the Boy's home with the glass plates, impressing passers
Speaker 1: by with these unique yet organic prints. Margaret experimented with
Speaker 1: her idaphone for years. Her work visualizing sound garnered the
Speaker 1: attention of scientists and artists alike. But for Margaret there
Speaker 1: was something more in her voice figures, ever devout as
Speaker 1: she sang and brought these pieces of sound into the world.
Speaker 1: She asked if God had done the same thing in
Speaker 1: creating our world out of the void. She said she
Speaker 1: hoped that her voice figures would provide quote, yet another
Speaker 1: link in the great chain of the organized universe that
Speaker 1: took its shape in the voice of God. In simpler terms,
Speaker 1: she asked, was Earth not a voice figure itself? Margaret
Speaker 1: died in nineteen oh seven. In her lifetime, she redefined
Speaker 1: the way we look at sound. Her work left behind
Speaker 1: an incredibly high fidelity form of her recorded voice. The
Speaker 1: only catch we don't actually know what it sounded like.
Speaker 1: All month, we're talking about women of Sound. For more information,
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast special
Speaker 1: thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co creator.
Speaker 1: As always, we'll be taking a break for the weekend.
Speaker 1: Tune in on Monday for a brand new theme.