In 1937, a Russian optical engineer named Evgeny Murzin developed a bizarrely different synthesizer that was photoelectrically operated. He named it after composer, Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, or ANS. The ANS synth interface is a glass plate covered with black mastic. This mastic is scraped off in the shape of a wave, any kind of wave. Photo cells then shine through the scraped area onto a bank of independently adjustable band-pass amplifiers which turn the light into pitches. Basically, it plays what is drawn. It has 720 available pitches and can play all of them simultaneously.
ANS synthesizer.
The Novachord was put out by Hammond starting in 1939 was pioneering being the first polyphonic synthesizer using subtractive synthesis. It contained over 160 vacuum tubes and 1000 capacitors. It weighed about 500 lbs and was as large as two upright pianos. It could play 72 notes, all of them at once if need be. ADSR envelopes were generated with switches and released with a pedal. It had very good timbre modulation. But the Novachord was beset with problems due to strict tolerances for its hundreds of components which made maintaining it difficult. Consequently, the Novachord never became a smashing commercial success and with the onslaught of the war it was soon forgotten. Hammond terminated production in 1942 after making 1069 of them. The Novachord can be heard in the movie
Gone with the Wind and was heard in movie scores into the 60s. Only a few are still in service.
A look in the back of the Novachord at a few of its many vacuum tubes.