The origin of Xyloba
By Samuel Langmeier, June 2012
A long time ago, I came across a marble
run in a toy shop in Zurich. Upon bouncing from the last track, the
marble would roll over three chimes. This was my inspiration for the
musical marble run. In 1969, after the birth of our third child, I began
working on this idea. It was important that the marbles should cleanly
strike the chimes, the plates should be interchangeable and it must be
possible to vary the intervals of the individual tones. These conditions
led to many questions: How can we determine the correct length and
slope of the ramps? How much space would the marbles need to strike the
chimes and subsequently bounce off? How can we ensure that the marbles
are guided properly?
Thus, after many experiments, we came up with the first melody and
construction game. I made the building components from individual glued
parts and the chimes were mounted vertically. This musical marble run
was protected by Swiss patent no. 555,192 in 1973. Having patent
protection was the prerequisite for being able to present the game in
1975 at the 4th International Exhibition for Inventions in Geneva.
The musical run was an immediate success and was awarded the bronze
medal. In the following years, I developed a mould that would help
simplify the production process: I no longer needed to glue the
components. Instead, I drilled the cavities from a compact piece of
wood. I was able to significantly improve the sound quality by coming up
with a modification that is seen in today's models: by horizontally
inserting the chimes on an independent mounting block. This was the
prototype for the musical marble runs that are commercially available
today.
Owing to a tremendous professional workload – I am a cellist for the
Tonhalle Orchester Zürich and often tour through Europe, the US, Japan
and China, and I am also a chamber musician and composer – I simply did
not find the time to look for a manufacturer for my marble run. Years
later, Weizenkorn perfected the product, in particular through the
brilliant implementation of bucket teeth as mounts for the chimes. This
fortunate association with Weizenkorn was subsequently also beneficial
for the global distribution of the Xyloba musical marble run.