This musician is playing the Prismatone electronic organ, what the April 1947 issue of Radio Craft asserted “promises to be by far the most attractive of all the lower-priced electronic music instruments.” The musician here was highly skilled, as the magazine noted that the instrument required a skilled operator.

The instrument consisted of a projector sending a beam of light through a translucent disc, which projected a rapidly altering pattern. The colors are solely for the benefit of the operator, as the instrument instead depended on the frequency of the pulsating light beam caused by the disc. The two wands contain photocells, and their output is the same frequency as the portion of the light at which they are aimed. Volume can be changed by altering the angle at which each wand was held. The outputs were fed into a high-fidelity audio amplifier.

The magazine noted that for an even more spectacular effect, the musician can wear finger rings with small selenium photocells in lieu of the wands.

The instrument was created by one Mr. Leslie Gould, a “well known Connecticut inventor of many electronic devices,” including “the Sonicator, a radar-like instrument for small boats.” One of Gould’s earlier inventions, part of a tuning mechanism, was at issue in Levy v. Gould, 87 F.2d 524 (C.C.P.A. 1937).