Classic Project: Mechanical Metronome

Abstract

Opinion is divided over who invented the mechanical pulse-emitting device for musicians known as the metronome. But the consensus is that a musical chronometer developed in the early 19th century by Dutch inventor Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel was adapted and improved by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel: engineer, imperial court mechanician at Vienna and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven (the first composer known to add metronome markings to symphonic scores). The 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' claims the metronome is erroneously ascribed to Maelzel, and yet, as with many inventions that evolved incrementally, the story is less straightforward.