Melograph


The Melograph, similar to the Melodiograph, is a mechanical apparatus for ethnomusicological transcription usually producing some sort of graph that can be preserved and filed, similar to a recording of music. Beginning with attempts by Milton Metfessel in 1928, assorted devices such as this have been developed or manufactured, the most notable dating back to the 1950s and situated at the University of California in Los Angeles, the University of Oslo, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Earlier use of the term

Melograph was a mechanical device that, when attached to a piano, notated on paper – in readable form – the exact, more or less, music played on the instrument. There were many attempts to invent, re-invent, and improve the technology:
Electric melographs
None were particularly successful.