Johann Maelzel

Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (1772 to 1838) was a German inventor, engineer and showman, born in Regensburg, the son of an organ builder. He moved to Vienna in 1792 and built an orchestrion, then in 1804 invented the panharmonicon, an automaton that played the instruments of a military band using bellows and revolving cylinders, which made him famous and led to his appointment as imperial court mechanician. In 1805 he bought Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess automaton, the Turk, and later repurchased it and exhibited it with other mechanical wonders. He also built an automaton trumpeter, an improved ear trumpet and a musical chronometer. He is best remembered for the metronome, which he reverse engineered from the earlier device of Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel and manufactured from 1816 in Paris, and Beethoven praised it. With Beethoven he planned Wellington's Victory for the panharmonicon, though the two later quarrelled over ownership. He died aboard a ship in the harbor of La Guaira, Venezuela.