In modern history, there are a lot of objects, the origin of which no one thinks about now. But more recently, a little over a hundred years ago, they had a completely different purpose. Simply due to the prevailing circumstances, this meaning was lost or even artificially hidden. Let's consider this with a simple example.
Here is a set of musical instruments in a 19th century engraving. The extreme left and right do not raise questions, they are common almost throughout Eurasia. In the middle between them, the bow is also quite understandable. But the second and fourth instruments slightly introduce into thoughts what kind of balalaika in two strings is (remembering a Soviet anecdote about an Asian who became the owner of the whole country)?
Well, since an anecdote about an Asian, then the instrument must be looked for in Asia, in fact, and it didn't take long to look for it. This is the kamancha, which is considered one of the oldest musical instruments. I am not an expert in the field of music and instruments, so I ask you not to scold me if I am mistaken somewhere.
Once at the institute, at the examination in higher mathematics, he deduced the differential equation of string vibrations (deduced, but with difficulty, everything was too complicated there, and now I don’t remember anything from it at all). And after this equation, I thought for some time what and for what purpose in stringed instruments. The soundboard, or resonator, serves to amplify acoustic vibrations, that's understandable. The neck is used for playing, i.e. to change the effective length of the strings with the musician's fingers. This changes the tonality of the sound when the strings are disturbed. This is also understandable. And what are the knobs for - short and thick at the top and long narrow at the bottom?
There is no information in common digital sources. But since the instrument is bowed, it is obvious that you cannot rest against its shoulder like a violin. This means that the instrument was supported with its long narrow end either on the ground or on the feet of the musician. Taking into account that all our conditional antiquity was concentrated in the 18-19 centuries (a lot has already been written on this topic by many), there is every reason to believe that the real kamancha looked exactly like that.
Since the designs of absolutely all musical instruments never contain anything superfluous, there is only one conclusion - the upper and lower knobs also had their own functionality, and the latter did not necessarily only serve to support the instrument. As always, this functionality is provided by the knob data form. What do they look like?
Promotional video:
This is the top knob. It differs, well, maybe only in size.
And this is the bottom one. Also different in size and rotated 180 degrees. Let's now analyze each of them separately. Let's start at the top. As you can see, it is installed on the railing, probably on purpose so that in the 19th century children would not ride on them. But somehow too complicated for such a purpose. And there were a lot of varieties of such knobs:
There are many options for artistic performance, but for some reason they are placed at the ends of the railing. And it can be seen that in many cases the material of their manufacture differs from the material of the structure on which it is mounted. There are even cases when such metal knobs are placed on stone (polymer-concrete?) Structures, for example, as here:
For what? Here it is clearly not so that the handrail is more convenient to grab. It is obvious that there is a metal bond between the knob and the structure itself, which is present in a hidden form even on stone structures. This metal bond is common to the entire building frame. And what is this knob in general?
Here it even stands where the mechanical strength of the railing is excluded. Doesn't it look like anything? About sport, you are….? Of course, the sports cup. Only now it is presented as a tradition, such as we inherited from knightly battles, as a prize to the winner. Maybe this, of course, is so, but most likely, the official history again does not finish. Judging by the variety of sports cups that have survived from not quite ancient times, not only wine was poured into them.
Imagine how you can drink wine from such a masterpiece, it resembles a fairy tale about a fox and a crane. But again, everything falls into place, if such a cup was one of the parts of the roof of ancient buildings, which are described in many articles. Well, for the same purpose, the cups were placed not only on the roofs, but also on the railings of the stairs. Stop.
We begin to think, or rather to remember the basics of word formation in the languages of the Indo-Romance group. As you know, in the proto-language, all words were the same, but in the process of evolution, words could change in different peoples in different ways. But always and everywhere the common origin of the word is given by a sequential set of consonants in a given word. How does the "sports cup" sound in European languages?
In English it is "cup", in French it is "coupe". The core of the word is a set of KUP sounds (if you do not pay attention to the transcription). And what in Russian is suitable for this combination of sounds? Well, of course, the "dome". Maybe there would be no communists, and sports cups would have been called just that, but then dogmas did not allow doing this. Anyway. So, the ice was broken. Why the dome was needed, in principle, has already been considered earlier.
Its task was to generate electrical vibrations under the influence of external atmospheric ones. And there were many varieties of such domes. It turns out that our cups are mini-domes? Hmmm … Once again, it becomes clear why such cups were sculpted wherever possible, from windows to furniture. Everyone thinks that these are details of aesthetics, but it turns out that this is far from the case.
There are a lot of such photographs of the interior of rich houses of the 19th century. It turns out that our mini-domes have many functional purposes, one of which has been seen as a source of an electric field.
It seems to me that in knightly tournaments the winner received not just a vessel for wine, but the most important dome from the castle that belonged to the defeated. This dome, which later became the goblet, was the heraldic symbol of the vanquished. Again everything falls into place. Well, what about the cups on the railing? Probably, here it is already necessary to delve into architecture.
Let's say the main domes are highlighted in red, the smaller secondary ones are highlighted in green. If along the path of the closed chain of metal connections of the building, which includes the stairs below, additional secondary domes are installed on the railing of the stairs, then the current in the closed loop of metal connections will be coordinated - it will be maximally induced by the domes dispersed along the entire length of the chain.
In reality, everything can be more complicated there, but these devices can allow, for example, to connect electric bulbs to this chain of metal connections of the building, as, for example, here:
Now such systems have been cut down everywhere, and the place where the lamps were stuck was covered with "rosettes" in the classical style. By the way, where does the word "socket" come from in an electrical context? Is it not from here? Again a play on words.
This is the lucarne of one of the old buildings, and the niche above the window opening was glowing. Has anyone seen anything like this now?
Well, I want to give one more way of using mini-domes (as a version) in order to remove the intrigue with the pillars:
Actually, after this photo we turn to the second knob on the kamancha, which is located below. More precisely, to its prototype.
A lot of photos of such pillars with mini-domes from the 19th century have survived. This is nothing more than a kind of pole without wires. Their main task is to transmit vibrations of atmospheric electricity systems over distances. The same pillars were massively used in the Russian Empire.
So, in the case of kamanches, we have the fact that this instrument emitted not only acoustic vibrations. This can be understood from the drawing, in which the soundboard is made of metal with incomprehensible holes, and the strings were, among other things, nothing more than a metal connection between two mini-domes, one of which served to generate electrical vibrations, and the second to transmit them in a modulated view over a distance into some kind of external device for enhanced playback. So amplifiers and radio microphones, most likely, were not invented in the 20th century, but much earlier, to find them, there is work to do.
Author: tech_dancer