Golden Flute

With the rich tones of a flute fashioned of fine gold, with motion pictures of rippling lines "recording sound waves, Professor Dayton Clarence Miller of the Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, illustrated last week "The Basis of Tone Quality in Instrumental Music."

To his absorbed Manhattan audience of 600 musicians, engineers, makers of musical instruments, this famed sound scientist, and opponent of the Einstein theory showed how the increased density of metal improves the tone of the instrument, talked on the development of perfect tone. From the lecture room his listeners followed him to the temporary rooms of the Museums of the Peaceful Arts. There they saw his collection of 711 Chinese flutes of jades and ivory flutes carved from human bones, of glass, of an eagle's wing, a ram's horn.

The pursed lips of a whistling boy, explained Professor Miller, made the first flute. Wooden whistles, Pan pipes, led the way to the tube with its many stops.

Scientifically a flute's note is simply the projection of a column of air and the vibration of this column before its diffusion into the air. The crowning glory of the flute art is the gold instrument, made with his own hands, many times lent to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Soon he expects to make a platinum flute that will give even richer, truer tone.