Ondioline

The Ondioline was a vacuum tube-powered keyboard instrument, invented in 1941 by the Frenchman Georges Jenny, and was a forerunner of today's synthesizers.

The Ondioline was capable of creating a wide variety of sounds. Its keyboard had a unique feature: it was suspended on special springs which made it possible to introduce a natural vibrato if the player moved the keyboard from side to side with their playing hand. The result was an almost human-like vibrato that lent a wide range of expression to the Ondioline. The keyboard was also pressure-sensitive, and the instrument had a knee volume lever.

The instrument's movable keyboard was modeled after the keyboard of another early electronic instrument from France, the Ondes Martenot. The Ondioline did not feature a ring (or ribbon) controller to control pitch, as the Martenot did. Instead, the Ondioline had a strip of wire, that when pressed, provided percussion effects, but it could not produce the Martenot's theremin-like pitch effects.

The advantage of the much smaller Ondioline was that it was very portable, and could be played in tandem with a piano or organ. Its' price was also much less than that of the Martenot (about $500).