People who looked at the patent plans said it wouldn't work. I wasn't too sure but by making the machine as faithfully to the plans I hoped to find out what any problems might be. Here's the final assembly.
Mechanically there is too much movement, twisting and pivoting on the lever mechanism to pull the tubes up. Either some structural supports need to be added or a completely new slider mechanism devised. Russolo in his patent says that this Nurnberg (Nuremberg) scissor type mechanism 'can be replaced by any other type of construction'.
The extension of the tubes would seem to make no difference to the sound. There is a pitch difference but that is made by the underneath pressure roller tightening the drum skin. The sound is similar to that made by my Ronzatori where the drum skin is tightened by the string. In fact Russolo suggests that the pipes could be replaced by 'resonators of another kind, e.g. Strings could be used'.
So as I blogged earlier I suspect that like the Instrument de Musique this machine was never made and really only the sketch of an idea to be developed. Ultimately the sounds it makes are a little underwhelming given the effort made to realize the machine.
