“‘Having returned home, I sat down and thought very seriously for a long time; and the result of all my thinking was that I decided to make an ordinary zimbal and to devise with the help of my friend the dervish Kerbalai-Azis-Nuaran such a mechanism of little hammers that their striking should produce the corresponding sounds. BTG XLI

“‘It began in this way: “‘I must first tell you that before this I already very well knew that half the length of any string gives twice the number of vibrations of a whole string of equal volume and density, and in accordance with this principle I arranged on the zimbal what are called “bridges” for the strings and then began correspondingly to tune all the strings for a certain ancient sacred melody in “oneeighth-toned” sounds, of course according to my “Perambarrsasidaan” or, as it is called in Europe, “tuning fork”, producing the vibrations of the Chinese absolute note “do”. BTG XLI

“‘And this constatation so greatly interested me that I then gave all my attention to the investigation of this alone and entirely ceased to occupy myself with the said zimbal. BTG XLI

“‘Only after several days did my friend and I notice that we were neglecting our main work, and therefore we decided from that day to devote half our time to finishing the zimbal and the other half to the said investigations. BTG XLI

“‘Soon the mechanical zimbal devised by us was ready; it was entirely satisfactory to us and I must say turned out to be something of the kind of the “new Greek hand organ” but with quarter tone sounds and a little larger in size. BTG XLI

“‘When we finally handed over our original zimbal to our Sheikh and told him what interested us most of all at that moment, he not only gave us his blessing to leave the monastery for a while for our purpose to occupy ourselves with the question which interested us, but even put at our disposal a large sum of money from the resources accumulated in the monastery. BTG XLI