Ora Railsback
Dr. Ora L. Railsback (born 1896 plus or minus one) was the head of the physics department at Northern Illinois University and took a special interest in piano tuning, contributing articles to the Acoustical Society of America. He started the university's band, after a certain Miss Majors took exception to the sound of a saxophone, and wouldn't have it in her orchestra. As an educator, he promoted the role of educators as researchers, and published on the subject. He used an electric chromatic stroboscope to study the tunings of various pianos as accomplished by a variety of piano tuners, and initiated a great deal of research into the subject of piano tuning.
"Scale Temperament as Applied to Piano Tuning"
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, volume 9, number 37 (1937).
Eastern Illinois University (was Eastern Illinois State Teachers College)
http://www.mocavo.com/The-History-of-Music-at-Eastern-Illinois-University-1899-1963/748976/77
The band made its debut at chapel, on October 27, 1927, after which it played at a football game. Dr. Railsback was its founder and first director. He was also its business manager, and played in it as well, and so did his wife, Florence. It led to the hiring in 1928 of the college's first teacher of music other than piano, who took over the band (and the orchestra), and merged it into the music department. Soon there were two bands, one, a marching band, and the other, a concert band.
http://www.eiu.edu/marching_band/History.php
Dr. Railsback played an essential role in the history of EIU's physics department, of course, as can be seen at:
http://www.eiu.edu/~physics/history.php
He arrived in 1924, trained (where?) as a physics teacher, "developed a program" (?), and became head of the Physics Department. In 1934, he left to complete his doctorate at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. In 1938, he applied for a patent, and in 1940, received US Pat. No. 2221523: "Pitch Determining Apparatus". You can see what he looked like at the EIU site, the very model of a well-groomed physics professor cum band conductor. He did his PhD research on music physics. He invented the famous chromatic stroboscope known commercially as the StroboConn! They still have the original model in storage. During World War II, he served in the Army. In 1950, he became the head of the physics department at the Navy Pier branch of the University of Illinois, which became the University of Illinois at Chicago. He became the head (?) of the Illinois chapter of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and served on the staff of the national organization. In 1962, he was appointed assistant to the vice president of the Chicago undergraduate division of the University of Chicago, in addition to his duties as professor and physics departmentt head.[1]
Northern Illinois University
Illinois State Teachers College
Here's his photographic portrait: http://thekeep.eiu.edu/archives_faculty_mr/253/ with "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License."
References[edit]
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