--- description: When he is not experimenting on cosmic rays, high-haired Director William Francis Gray Swann of Franklin Institute's Bartol Research Foundation, plays a cello. Young William Edgar Danforth,... title: Music: Oscillion image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Music: Oscillion by [TIME](/author/time/) May 31, 1937 4:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) May 31, 1937 4:00 AM CUT When he is not experimenting on cosmic rays, high-haired Director William Francis Gray Swann of Franklin Institute’s Bartol Research Foundation, plays a cello. Young William Edgar Danforth, his assistant, plays a cello too. Both are mainstays of the Swarthmore (Pa.) Symphony Orchestra, a volunteer organization of about 40 men and women who play good music free. Because nobody in the orchestra can handle a French horn or a bass clarinet, Drs. Swann and Danforth built an electrical “oscillion” so ingenious that it can be made to sound like either, so simple that a child can master it. Last week at a Swarthmore concert the oscillion made its world debut, playing the long clarinet passages in Cesar Franck’s D Minor Symphony without a mishap. Listeners thought the oscillion lacked color, was a little twangier in tone, otherwise indistinguishable from the woodwind it replaced. The Danforth & Swann oscillion is a simple-looking oblong wooden box with an electrical circuit inside. Current flows through a resistance, is stored up in a condenser, spills into a neon tube, becomes a series of electrical “pulses.” A loud speaker translates the pulses into sound. To play music the oscillionist presses down on a keyboard and changes the resistance. This alters the frequency, thereby the pitch. As now constructed the oscillion has a range of five octaves which can easily be increased to eight. Inventors Danforth & Swann deplore the oscillion’s higher ranges, expect it will be most useful pinch-hitting for bass clarinet, bassoon, tuba and string bass. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6891719/music-oscillion/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6891719/music-oscillion/"},"headline":"Music: Oscillion","datePublished":"1937-05-31T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-19T20:06:36.611Z","description":"When he is not experimenting on cosmic rays, high-haired Director William Francis Gray Swann of Franklin Institute's Bartol Research Foundation, plays a cello. Young William Edgar Danforth,...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6891719/music-oscillion/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6891719/music-oscillion/","name":"Music: Oscillion"}}]}] ```