Kind: captions
Language: en
there is a limestone cave in Western
Virginia where one of its giant Chambers
has been turned into a musical
instrument they call it an organ but
it's like no other organ on the
planet it relies on electromechanical
mallets steel bolts electric guitar
pickups and the main vibrating material
Limestone it's more technically referred
to as a lithophone the only one of its
kind in the world but people around here
just call it the organ so veritasium
producer Peter went to check it out
we're going on the ground let's
go can you tell me a little bit about
the history of this place uh lay Caverns
discovered 1878 and in fact to your
right is where they first came in oh no
way on August 13th 1878 a group of
hunters felt a cool breeze coming from a
small hole in the ground putting down
their rifles they began to dig
making a hole big enough for the
smallest of them to fit through Andrew
and Quint had only a candle for light as
they lowered themselves down into the
hole they spent the next few months
exploring they kept finding giant
Caverns connected by narrow passageways
the ceilings and Floors were covered in
stalactites and
stalagmites they even found an
underground Lake the cave system they
had accidentally stumbled upon turned
out to be the largest in the eastern
United States covering 26 hectares it's
now known as the Laray caverns and it's
visited by half a million tourists each
year that's dream Lake how still that
water is and the reflection is just
really something else the Oregon is one
of the lower areas okay uh it's in a
room called the cathedral a very large
room yeah that makes sense and they used
to have uh dances down there balls they
used to call it the ballroom before the
organ was put in oh no way so in the
1920s people would go down here and have
oh yeah bowls and dances and well it was
no it was a great place because it's air
conditioned basically naturally so yeah
that makes sense oh my God are you
kidding me no
way oh this is so
gorgeous and there's the control panel
for the organ that's the organ you're
actually inside the organ right now the
organ covers 3 and 1/2 acres okay all
the notes are scattered out around us of
course this was started in 1954 first
played in 1957 okay so it took three
years to get from yes welcome to the
beautiful caverns of Laray and Laray
Virginia and particularly to the great
stalacpipe organ which is located in
this great Cathedral likee structure
which is 260 ft below the surface this
organ is so huge that you stand not
before it but within it in 1954 while on
a tour of the caverns for his son's
birthday Leland sprinkle a mathematician
who worked at the Pentagon had an idea
see during the tour the guide walked
around with a small Mallet he would
occasionally hit a stalic Tite producing
a musical tone this was the start of
sprinkle's three-year project to turn
the cave into a musical instrument since
you asked for it we shall be most happy
to show you how we make music from the
agent stalactites around us what he did
is he walked around these Caverns with a
ladder and climbing equipment and little
mallets and little tuning forks and he
would hit on stalactites and then when
there was one that was close enough to
concert pitch that he wanted he'd take a
disc grinder and grind off the stall
Tite until it came to the pitch that he
wanted so this one should be middle
CA stalic TI form very slowly in this
cave they grow at around 16 cubic cm
every 120 years the rate is dependent on
the amount of water that flows so some
stalactites grow quickly While others
don't really grow at all they form as
slightly acidic water flows through the
ground it dissolves the Limestone and
then redeposits it when it comes in
contact with the air as the water drips
to the ground it can also deposit the
Limestone on the floor leading to a
stall Mite sometimes over thousands of
years the stalactite and stall Mite can
fuse together forming a
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now back to the
cave if you tap on a stalic Tite then
like a tuning fork it vibrates at its
resonant frequency that frequency
depends on the size and shape of the
stalactite bigger stalic ties make lower
notes and it also depends on the elastic
modulus of the material in this case
it's all lime Stone so to adjust the
resonant frequencies sprinkle shaved a
bit off the end of some stall tis
putting them into concert pitch the
organ wasn't connected to the console
when we visited so Peter didn't get a
chance to play it but Rob Scallan who
has a great YouTube channel made a video
about it a couple years ago we asked him
what it's like to play a cave it's hard
to describe the feeling of playing a
cave
[Music]
it's very like grounding very surreal
very beautiful you know if I'm being
romantic about it you can you can hear
the eons and eons and eons of time that
were needed to create this
[Music]
thing the cave is of course huge and all
the notes are in different places so
some are further away some are closer
some are Amplified near you some aren't
and I love Reverb and the amount of
Reverb in this room is just so immense
and the notes are so pure and beautiful
and they're in different places so they
like have different Reverb it's a very
like hauntingly beautiful type of
[Music]
sound as you can see there's also the
solenoid that is basically a mallet
after the tuning has been completed we
design a custombuilt bracket to which we
attach an electrically operated plunger
this plunger with its rubber tip strikes
the stalactite causing it to vibrate
since different musical stalactites are
far away from each other and their
volume variable sprinkle Amplified the
vibrations he could have used
microphones but in the 1950s those
weren't particularly robust so instead
he borrowed an idea from a piece of
technology in Ed in the 1930s the
electric guitar
pickup a guitar pickup is a coil of wire
wrapped around a magnet when a steel
guitar string vibrates near it it
interacts with the magnetic field which
induces a current in the wire it doesn't
work with non-metal guitar strings the
thing that's vibrating needs to be
ferromagnetic sprinkle added a steel
bolt to each of his musical stall ties
and then used a pickup to detect the
vibrations these signals are Amplified
mix and played back through speakers you
also got to consider the weight of the
bolt that goes in too oh right yeah but
the guitar pickups created an unexpected
Problem Radio
interference I don't know exactly how it
works but one of the keys was picking up
a local radio station which actually
turned it into a sampler it was a really
fun part of the video and actually
sounded pretty cool that happens with
electronic instruments sometimes even
caves
[Music]
what is that it happens every time I hit
that
[Music]
key I'm like turning on the
radio it is you're FM signal you oh my
gosh that is what it is
getting so the radio is
here I thought like is that a human
voice like is that that would be the AM
radio AM station across the street if
they were tuned in you know 1957 have
they become longer and hands gone out of
tune well he tried to pick stalactites
that are inactive that aren't growing
anymore is what he tried to do but but
if he found stalactites that were
growing because I'm seeing like a little
bit of water right like there's a little
bit of growth happening and you'll see
that and that that comes and goes U but
uh we've never had to retune one yet
like I love the idea that there's an
organ that could grow out
it could because of how stalles grow I
don't think it'll be in my lifetime but
it could but if he if he chose one if he
chose a bunch that weren't inactive
right it would be Out Of Tune already oh
yeah if they were completely active it
would be that's so cool it's very mad
scientists he definitely couldn't get
away with it now like going into a place
like this and then just starting to
shave off the stalactites that took eons
to be created by Nature thankfully it
stays in tune cuz they can't continue
shaving off the parts of this cave this
is just such a strange and beautiful and
kind of insane project to take this
gorgeous Cavern and make it even more
beautiful by turning into a musical
instrument this
structure has been being
created drop by drop for an unfathomable
amount of years and that's pretty all
inspiring
what
[Music]