Johann Nepomuk Maelzel

Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (or Mälzel; August 15, 1772 – July 21, 1838) was a German inventor, engineer, and showman, best known for reverse engineering the metronome that Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel invented and mass producing it . As for several music-playing automatons as well as displaying the Mechanical Turk chess machine. He worked with Beethoven to compose a piece of music for one of his inventions.

Life and work Maelzel was born in Regensburg. The son of an organ builder, he received a comprehensive musical education. He moved to Vienna in 1792. After several years' study and experiment, he produced an orchestrion instrument, which was publicly exhibited and afterward sold for 3,000 florins. In 1804, he invented the panharmonicon, an automaton able to play the musical instruments of a military band, powered by bellows and directed by revolving cylinders storing the notes.

In 1816 Maelzel became established in Paris as manufacturer of a metronome. Maelzel's metronome was copied from a metronome invented earlier by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel.

Maelzel left Paris for Munich in 1817 and then again took up his abode in Vienna. At this time he found means to repurchase von Kempelen's chess player, and, after spending several preparatory years in constructing and improving a number of mechanical inventions, he formed an enterprise devoted to exhibiting his array of mechanical wonders in the New World.

He died on a ship in the harbor of La Guaira, Venezuela, reportedly from alcohol poisoning.

Quotations Maelzel was not always viewed kindly by his contemporaries: Maelzel will be especially remembered ... by the Metronome. ...As a man, Maelzel seems to have been quarrelsome, extravagant, and unscrupulous. ... Had he possessed a larger amount of culture and of conscience, he might have done service to high Art. — The Year-book of facts in science and art (1856)