Metronome - History

History

According to Lynn Townsend White, Jr., the Andalusian inventor, Abbas Ibn Firnas (810-887), made the earliest attempt at creating "some sort of metronome."

Galileo Galilei first studied and discovered concepts involving the pendulum in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In 1696, Etienne Loulié first successfully used an adjustable pendulum in the construction of the first mechanical metronome; however, his design did not produce any sound and did not include an escapement with which to keep the pendulum in motion. In order to get the correct pulse with this kind of visual devices, one needs to watch the precise moment where the pendulum is exactly vertical, as the left and right positions are constantly changing due to the decreasing amplitude.

The more familiar mechanical musical chronometer was invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel in Amsterdam in 1814. Through questionable practice, Johann Maelzel, incorporating Winkel's ideas added a scale and called it metronome, started manufacturing the metronome under his own name in 1816: "Maelzel's Metronome". The original text of Maelzel's patent in England (1815) can be downloaded.

Ludwig van Beethoven was the first notable composer to indicate specific metronome markings in his music, in 1817.