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The earliest purely electronic musical instrument was the Teleharmonium or Telharmonium, developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. The Teleharmonium was intended to be listened to using telephone receivers.
Like the later Hammond organ, the Teleharmonium used electromechanical tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis. An authoritative history of the Telharmonium is 'Magical Music from the Telharmonium' by Reynold Weidenaar, Scarecrow Press, 1995.
Electronic music instruments