Telharmonium

In the late 1800s, lawyer and inventor Thaddeus Cahill patented his "telharmonium," a machine which would make music and pipe it across Manhattan along phone lines - a century before Rhapsody and Spotify arrived on the streaming scene. Initially, subscribers could [blank] in by phone to listen to live music synthesized on his vast contraption, but that was just the beginning of his grander vision. Later, restaurants and hotels would likewise pay to [blank] these sounds into shared spaces. His tunes became a kind of proto-Muzak. But in this [blank] before amps, end users had to attach paper funnels to boost volume. At the heart of this music-making network was Telharmonic Hall, a building in the middle of New York City [blank] with around 200 tons of equipment and built out at an estimated cost of around $200,000. Cahill called this his "music plant," and it aptly resembled something like a complex industrial factory filled with moving parts.