‘Strange Bedfellows’. The Relationship between Music
Technology and Military Technology in the First Half of
the Twentieth Century
Hans-Joachim Braun
I
Talking about military technology and music technology in the same breath might
sound somewhat strange, but a closer look reveals that they often are of similar
origin.1
- I should like to thank Jont Allen, Siegfried Böhm, Mark Clark, Robert Colburn, Sheldon
Hochheiser, Walter Kaiser, David Morton, Christoph Reuter, Bernd Schabbing and Wolfgang
Voigt.
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Some writers, like Friedrich Kittler, were busy trying to find
military origins in many different devices of communication
technology. 2
- Friedrich Kittler, Grammophon, Film, Typewriter, Berlin 1986, p. 77–78, p. 148–9, p. 153–4.
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In some cases Kittler is undoubtedly right, in others his arguments are too far-fetched or
wrong. As an example the vocoder has, contrary to Kittler, no military origins
and the way, German bombers were guided to Britain by radar during the
Second World War, does not reflect the origins of stereophonic technology. But
there are other inventions and devices used in music which do have military
origins.
The first half of the twentieth century was chosen for good reasons, because during that
time electricity and electronics spread rapidly, being applied in many different areas. In
the 1920s and 1930s there was a sizeable number of ‘music engineers’ who developed
electrical and electronic musical instruments, but were also busy researching and developing
in other areas like telephone and telegraph technology or technology for detection and
intelligence.3
- See, among others, Joachim Stange, Die Bedeutung der elektroakustischen Medien für die
Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, Pfaffenweiler 1989, p. 102–82; Hans-Joachim Braun, ‘I sing
the Body Electric. Der Einfluß von Elektroakustik und Elektronik auf das Musikschaffen im
20.Jahrhundert’, Technikgeschichte, 1992, vol. 61, p. 353–73.
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They worked as independent inventors, as physicists and engineers in corporate laboratories, in
government and public research organisations or sometimes as officers in military laboratories.
As in many other fields, the principle of ‘dual use’ also applies to music and military
technology. 4
- Hans-Joachim Braun, ‘Militärische und zivile Technik. Ihr Verhältnis in historischer
Perspektive’, Uniforschung. Forschungsmagazin der Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg,
1991, vol. 1, p. 58–66.
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In the same way as a factory for locomotives can be transformed into one for
military tanks or vice versa or as an artificial satellite can be used for military
or civil purposes, acousticians researching on the acoustic improvement
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