Small box, big deal: the Bardeen music box at the Spurlock Museum

4/19/2015 Wayne Pitard, The Spurlock Museum

Inside the University of Illinois’ Spurlock Museum, you’ll find a small, rectangular box made of clear plastic, with a row of black buttons on the left and a small round loudspeaker on the right.

Written by Wayne Pitard, The Spurlock Museum

Inside the University of Illinois’ Spurlock Museum, you’ll find a small, rectangular box made of clear plastic, with a row of black buttons on the left and a small round loudspeaker on the right.

Although this diminutive device is modest in appearance, it is in fact one of the most important technological artifacts of the 20th century. It is John Bardeen’s music box, the world’s earliest portable transistorized device. Bardeen co-invented the transistor at Bell Labs in late 1947,one of the watershed moments in modern history. 

Bardeen holding his music box.
Bardeen holding his music box.

The device and its eventual development into the microchip has changed our world more than perhaps any other single invention of the past century, and the music box stands at the dawn of that momentous process. The music box was created to demonstrate the transistor — not an easy thing to do in the early months, before a practical, stable design for the transistor was developed. But in early 1949, a Bell engineer built three music boxes portable enough to easily take to conferences. Of the three, only Bardeen’s survives.

Although the box looks like a radio, it is not. It is a musical instrument. On the left is a vertical row of five black buttons, each of which produces a different tone when pushed. Thus, a simple song can be played on the box. Two of the early cylindrical point-contact transistors were installed toward the front of the case, one on each side of the speaker, so they could easily be seen. Each is labeled on the box, as well.

The transistor on the left, marked “Transistor Oscillator,” acted as an oscillator when the buttons were pushed and amplified the sound as it passed to the box’s speaker. The second transistor, labeled “Transistor Amplifier,” could be turned on when an external speaker was connected to the box using the jack labeled “Output to PA.” A microphone could also be attached at the port marked “Speech Input.” 

Bardeen took the box with him to the lectures he gave on the transistor and played a tune on it to demonstrate how the tiny device worked. He generally used it at the beginning of the talk.

The first song ever publicly performed on a transistorized device? Reflecting Bardeen’s sense of humor, the scientist chose to play the Prohibition drinking song, “How Dry I Am,” which provided him a memorable lead-in to his lecture. 

He kept a small sheet of paper taped to the top of the box, with the key numbers and lyrics of the song to make sure he played it correctly. The paper, in his own handwriting, still sits on the top of the box. Bardeen brought his box with him when he moved to the University of Illinois in 1951 and used it in demonstrations for his students throughout his teaching and research career. In the early years, it was used to introduce scientists, engineers, colleagues, and students to the transistor; it was several years before transistors came to be used in devices for the general public. 

The reverse of Bardeen's 1956 Nobel Prize medal, showing Nature personified emerging from a cloud and holding a cornucopia, while personified science lifts her veil.
The reverse of Bardeen's 1956 Nobel Prize medal, showing Nature personified emerging from a cloud and holding a cornucopia, while personified science lifts her veil.

After transistors became common, Bardeen continued to show the music box in his lectures, to highlight its historical significance as the earliest portable transistor circuit. It continued to function through the rest of Bardeen’s life and beyond.

In 1985, he loaned it for display to the World Heritage Museum, the Spurlock’s predecessor located in Lincoln Hall, on condition that he be allowed to borrow it for lectures and demonstrations. For years, Bardeen’s first graduate student and later colleague, Professor Emeritus Nick Holonyak Jr., regularly performed routine maintenance on the music box, even after Bardeen’s death in 1991. The box continued to be playable until 2003, when it went silent. The Spurlock Museum is proud to count it as one of its greatest treasures.

This story first appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of Resonance, ECE ILLINOIS' biannual magazine.


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This story was published April 19, 2015.