EPOCH-MAKING INSTRUMENTS

Electronic musical instruments such as the telharmonic, the theremin, the ondes martenot, the trautoni, the neo-Bechstein grand piano and the Hammond organ are central to the thesis. With the exception of the telharmonic - which was constructed in the USA around 1900 and which constitutes a starting point for history - these instruments were demonstrated, sold or built in Norway. The attention around them was changing. The electromechanical Hammond organ was one of the instruments that had the greatest impact in Norway before 1940, above all as a church instrument. But the Hammond organ was also the instrument that led to the strongest controversy.

A consistent theme is whether the early electronic musical instruments were understood as tools for a completely new music or as replacements for traditional instruments. The thesis points to a mismatch between the visions of the instruments that were expressed in newspapers, magazines and books, and the music that was performed with them in concert halls, at exhibitions and in cinemas. In the main, the new instruments were used to imitate known instruments. The thesis also focuses on how the electronic musical instruments were met with both enthusiasm and criticism. It discusses, among other things, how the criticism was linked to notions of technology and authenticity.

In the 1860s, there were still some unresolved problems related to the mass production of beer. The science of pasteurization and cleaning yeast had not yet been established. An important factor in the industrial mass production and export of beer was that the beer had to meet certain standards and that it had to be recognisable; that is, the beer always tasted the same. Based on Louis Pasteur's yeast research, Emil Chr. Hansen at the Carlsberg laboratory found that the yeast they used could contain a kind of "wild yeast" which could make the beer sour, and which led to great variation in the taste between different brews of the same type of beer. In 1885, Hansen developed a new method for purifying the yeast, so that this factor became constant. This made it possible to mass produce a standardized beer.

The export business was established in parallel with what we refer to as the modern breakthrough for Norwegian beer production. Abroad, we see that the export of beer made up a significant part of, among other things, the German, English and Dutch brewery market. For the Norwegian breweries, export became part of the premise for an active investment in establishing and expanding the market. This doctoral work will therefore provide more knowledge about the enabling technologies that helped both to establish the export industry and to develop a new and standardized brewing production.