Discover the Oldest, Weirdest Instrument On Earth: The Lithophone

Sta­lac­tites hang tight to the ceil­ing, and sta­lag­mites push up with might from the floor: this is a mnemon­ic device you may once have learned, but chances are you haven’t had much occa­sion to remem­ber it since. Still, it would sure­ly be called to mind by a vis­it to Luray Cav­erns in the Amer­i­can state of Vir­ginia, home of the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ. As its name sug­gests, that attrac­tion is an organ made out of sta­lac­tites, the geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tions that grow from cave ceil­ings. Not long after the dis­cov­ery of Luray Cav­erns itself in 1878, its sta­lac­tites were found to res­onate through the under­ground space in an almost musi­cal fash­ion when struck — a prop­er­ty Leland W. Sprin­kle took to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion in the mid-nine­teen fifties.

“Dur­ing a tour of this world-famous nat­ur­al won­der, Mr. Sprin­kle watched in awe, which was still cus­tom­ary at the time, as a tour guide tapped the ancient stone for­ma­tions with a small mal­let, pro­duc­ing a musi­cal tone,” says Luray Cav­erns’ offi­cial site. “Mr. Sprin­kle was great­ly inspired by this demon­stra­tion and the idea for a most unique instru­ment was con­ceived.”

Con­cep­tion was one thing, but exe­cu­tion quite anoth­er: it took him three years to locate just the right sta­lac­tites, shave them down to ring out at just the right fre­quen­cy, and rig them up with elec­tron­i­cal­ly acti­vat­ed, key­board-con­trolled mal­lets. For the tech­ni­cal­ly mind­ed Sprin­kle, who worked at the Pen­ta­gon as a math­e­mati­cian and elec­tron­ics sci­en­tist, this must not have been quite as tedious a labor as it sounds.

The result was the biggest, the old­est (at least accord­ing to the age of the cave itself), and arguably the weird­est musi­cal instru­ment on Earth, a litho­phone for the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s hero­ic age of engi­neer­ing. You can see the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ in the video from Ver­i­ta­si­um at the top of the post, and hear a record­ing of Sprin­kle him­self play­ing it below that. In the video just above, YouTu­ber and musi­cian Rob Scal­lon gets a chance to take it for a spin. View­ers of his chan­nel know how much expe­ri­ence he has with exot­ic instru­ments (includ­ing the glass armon­i­ca, orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed by Ben Franklin, which we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), but even so, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a cave — and to make use of its sur­round sound avant la let­tre — hard­ly comes every day. Here we have proof that the old, weird Amer­i­ca endures, and that the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ is its ide­al sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.