DON’T TAKE A DEEP BREATH
Ammoniaphone promised a stronger voice through ‘ Italianized air’
The crowd that gathered at St. James’s Hall in London on a November evening in 1884 was not your usual concert audience. Many of the seats were occupied by scientists who had been invited to witness the effects of an invention that was claimed to have the “most wonderful results upon the throat and lungs,” and would also extend the range of the voice, making the notes full and rich.
Dr. Carter Moffat, professor of chemistry in Glasgow, was set to introduce his Ammoniaphone, a device he had been working on for years and was said to be a triumph of chemical science. Since childhood, Moffat had been interested in improving the speaking and singing voice because his own was weak — as he described it, it was of “very poor quality and almost destitute of intonation.” In order to improve it, he carried out experiments, inhaling numerous gases and partaking of various chemical solids and fluids. This had set the stage for his discovery.
The concert was organized by Miss Carlingford, a young vocalist who had garnered fame with her performances in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. She now wished to publicly recognize the benefit she and many of her professional friends had derived from the use of the instrument.
During a break in the performance, Moffat stepped to the podium and delivered a lecture on how he had developed the Ammoniaphone after wondering why Italian singers had such golden tones. On a professional visit to Italy, he claimed to have noted that the air there had a different quality, prompting him to examine it in locations around the country. He concluded that Italian air had unusually high levels of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia, probably the result of volcanic activity. A curiosity, since at that time there was no way the trace quantities of these chemicals in air could have been identified.
Moffat never did describe his methods, but before long he had designed his Ammoniaphone, a flute- like tube containing an absorbent material saturated with hydrogen peroxide at one end and ammonia at the other. There was a mouthpiece at the centre, through which a current of air could be drawn into the lungs; it was claimed that after a few inhalations, squeaky voices would be converted into robust tenors. Once depleted of chemicals, the instrument could be sent to the manufacturer to be recharged.
After Moffat’s presentation, volunteers were invited on stage and asked to speak in their natural voice before inhaling the “artificial Italianized air.” The inventor called attention to the fact that after using the Ammoniaphone, the voices were louder and had an improved tone.
Not everyone was convinced, though. One newspaper correspondent noted no obvious change and remarked “that if the inhalation of free ammonia and peroxide of hydrogen is so good for the voice, it seemed scarcely necessary to enclose these ingredients in an expensive flute- like case to test their powers, and the fact of doing so and calling the vapour they give off ‘ artificial Italian air’ savours to me of quackery.”
Moffat licensed the production of the Ammoniaphone to the Medical Battery Company, which then geared up the advertising, recommending the gadget not only for singers but for public speakers, parliamentary men, schoolmasters and clergymen. The company even commissioned an Ammoniaphone song that told of the plight of a young man who wanted to propose to his sweetheart but had lost his voice: “Ah! Well for him and for the fair / He’d heard that pure Italian air / Might be inhaled, imparting tone / Through Moffat’s famed Ammoniaphone.”
The device claimed to do more than just “cultivate voice by chemical means.” Throat and chest diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, cough, deafness from colds and even sleeplessness would succumb to its powers.
Interestingly, another contraption sold by the same company had a similar promise. That was Dr. Carter Moffat’s Cool Featherweight Electric Body Belt. “Stop taking poisonous drugs,” the ads urged, “instead wear the electric belt and say goodbye to indigestion, liver torpidity, internal weakness, gout, sciatica, sleeplessness, melancholia, palpitation and other drug- baffling ailments. Should be worn by all because its electricity is absorbed by the system. No vinegar or other acids need be used. It removes morbid and impure matters from the blood. Great for nervous depression and brain overwork.”
People who bought into this daft scheme did not suffer from an overworked brain. How Moffat, a respected scientist, got roped into this scheme isn’t clear, but perhaps by licensing his Ammoniaphone to the Medical Battery Company he had signed a deal with the devil. In 1893 the company was indicted for fraud and put out of business, and with that the Ammoniaphone faded into obscurity, relegated to museum showcases. Visitors to London’s Science Museum can still see one, although most just walk by, oblivious of how this peculiar tube once captivated a nation.
There’s no question that many singers sang the praises
The invention was claimed to have the most wonderful results upon the throat and lungs.
of the Ammoniaphone. Could it really have improved their warbling ? Certainly, inhaling a gas can change the sound that is produced. It isn’t because the vocal cords vibrate at a different frequency; their vibration is actually independent of the gas that surrounds them. But the speed at which sound travels depends on the density of the gas. Helium is less dense than nitrogen, the major component of air, and that is responsible for the classic Donald Duck effect. It is possible that inhaling a mix of ammonia and vapours of hydrogen peroxide would temporarily change the timbre of the voice and that is what fans of the Ammoniaphone experienced.
That theory would require testing, but as much as I like science, I’ll leave the exploration of inhaling “Italianized air” to someone else.