How times have changed (thank goodness).
I came across this pic the other day. Is this for real ?
It's a drawing of a "cat organ".
Cruelty knew no bounds in the 17th century.
Many credit Athanasius Kircher with the original design of this instrument. He was a German Jesuit scholar.
"The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed, a mechanism drove a spike in the appropriate cat’s tail. The result was a melody of meows".
Synth lovers today respect all animals, especially cats.
This is what Spike has to say about all this: