Why this word is great
TELHARMONIUM — [Noun] An early electric musical instrument that produces music remotely via alternating current, played via a keyboard and received by a telephone-like device. From tele- ("distance") + harmonium ("a keyboard instrument producing sound by air blown through reeds"). Unlike the "harmonium" (a modest, wind-fed companion for parlors and chapels) or the "synthesizer" (a sleek, self-contained architect of sound), the telharmonium was a sprawling, impractical dream: music as utility, piped through wires like gas or water. It was the whir of dynamos in a basement, the crackle of a distant waltz through an earpiece, the ghost of a melody flickering across a switchboard—a forgotten prelude to the age of streaming, when electricity first whispered its promise to carry art across the silence between us.