Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/24

 understand the classic authors who mention them. M. de Caumont, a modern French writer, says, "The ancients appear to have known two sorts of organ—the hydraulic and the pneumatic, but they were both acted upon by means of æriform fluid, which in the first would be the effect of a fall of water, as in our forges, or of a current of water which turned a wheel, which of itself moved some secret handle; or rather by the steam of boiling water, as in our steam engines; or lastly by means of hydraulic bellows."

Ctesibius of Alexandria (who flourished according to the best accounts, about a century before Christ), a great mechanic, is said to have made many improvements in the wind apparatus of the organ, but the descriptions of his labours that have been handed down to us are scarcely intelligible, and certainly would not repay the time and thought required to elucidate them.