Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 29

REMAKING HISTORY

By William Gurstelle, Workshop Warrior

The Tuning Fork

Build the 18th-century tool that replaced faulty pitch pipes.

AFTER MUCH OF THE CITY WAS destroyed by fire in 1666, London was elegantly rebuilt, and by the end of the 17th century it was perhaps the most prosperous city in Europe. Concomitant with that rebirth was a cultural revival that placed great emphasis on music.

Music, especially in the Baroque style, was everywhere, and many of England’s most well-known composers, George Frideric Handel, Henry Purcell, and Jeremiah Clark among them, wrote and regularly performed in this period. One talented young trumpet player, John ...