Musical fountain
A musical fountain, also known as a fairy fountain, prismatic fountain or dancing fountain, is a type of choreographed fountain that creates aesthetic designs as a form of entertainment. The displays are commonly synchronised to music and also feature lighting effects that are refracted and reflected by the moving water. Contemporary multimedia fountains can include lasers, video projection and three-dimensional imagery.
Installations can be large scale, employing hundreds of water jets and lights, and costing into the millions of dollars. Techniques tend to be complex, and require mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, and electronic components that are usually kept out of view.
Fountains that are choreographed to music
The earliest musical fountains were played manually by a live operator, who usually controlled pumps or valves and sometimes lights by way of switches on a control panel. Music was almost always live. Later, choreography could be prerecorded on a punched paper card which was scanned by a computer; and even later, it could be recorded on magnetic tape or, in the most modern shows, on a CD or in an app along with the music. In most automated examples, the choreography is still painstakingly programmed by hand, while some shows are still played live from a control console. Recent advances in technology provides for unattended automatic choreography that can rival manual programming.The earliest choreographed musical fountains
The Bodor Fountain
was a Hungarian mechanical engineer who built a musical or chiming fountain in the Transylvanian town of Marosvásárhely between 1820 and 1822. His fountain had a round floor-plan, with two arched stairs on the sides, and a dome roof supported by six pillars. The mechanical core was a hydraulic structure driven by the force of water that played popular chimes at every six hours. There was a gilded Neptune statue on the top, that turned round in 24 hours. The musical device was destroyed in 1836 by a snow storm, and was never restored. The fountain itself was demolished in 1911. An almost identical copy was built on Margaret Island of Budapest in 1935−1936 that did not operate by hydraulic means, but used electricity instead.Křižík's light fountain
was built by the Czech inventor and electrical engineer František Křižík in 1891 on the occasion of the World Exhibition in Prague. It became a unique European attraction. The fountain was rebuilt in the 1920s by architect Z. Stašek. The bottom of the fountain plate is equipped with 1300 multicolored reflectors and water circuits composed of more than two kilometers of pipes with almost 3000 nozzles. In 2018–2021 the fountain was closed.The work of F. W. Darlington
F. W. Darlington was a pioneer in electrical fountain control as well as water design.Prismatic Fountain, Denver, Colorado
In 1908, Darlington constructed a fountain in Denver City Park lake at a cost of. It featured eleven colored light streams that were controlled by an operator. In 2009, the fountain was restored using modern technology for.Prismatic Fountain, New Orleans, Louisiana
The Darlington fountain in West End, New Orleans, was likely completed around 1915 or 1916 as the last date on the original drawings are from February 1915. The fountain served as an icon for the West End Park and surrounding yacht clubs and numerous restaurants that were located in the area.All of Darlington's fountains required an operator to change the water effects and lighting and were likely used in conjunction with music played by a band or orchestra for special events. It is unknown if the fountain was operated in a static mode when there were no performances or if it was shut off.
Restoration of this fountain is planned by the Friends of West End in New Orleans.
Garfield Park, Indianapolis, Indiana
In 1915, the new greenhouses and conservatory were built in Garfield Park, Indianapolis. The dedication of the Sunken Garden took place on October 29, 1916. In 1916, Darlington was hired to design and build the fountains at the east end of the Sunken Garden. The fountains were the first in the country to be equipped with the mechanics that allowed the changing of the spray and displayed lights according to the season and holiday. For Memorial Day, the fountain's lights were alight with red, white, and blue, and on other days, gold and white. The fountains are still an attraction for visitors. The fountain was restored by The Fountain People in 1997 and with a musical control system by Atlantic Fountains in 2003.Pool of Industry, 1939 New York World's Fair
An early example of a musical fountain choreographed live was the Pool of Industry at the 1939 New York World's Fair, where three operators controlled the fountain, guided by a paper program that unscrolled under a glass window like the paper roll of a player piano. However, rather than controlling the effects directly like a piano roll, it was marked with commands that told the operators when to push the buttons and throw the switches. The fountain was more than just water and lights. Besides 3 million watts of lights and a gigantic pool containing 1,400 water nozzles, there were over 400 gas jets with a mechanism that caused colored flames and fireworks were shot from over 350 launchers, creating a nighttime spectacle on a grand scale. Music was played live by the fair's band and broadcast by large speakers to the areas surrounding the display. The updated show displayed at the same fairgrounds in 1964 lacked the colored flames but used punched cards for the choreography, had prerecorded music, and utilized the then-revolutionary system of dichroic light filtering which now allowed a dark colored lens and a light colored lens to produce the same brightness of light. It was by this process that 700,000 watts of light produced over 3 megacandelas. This show also had single lights with multiple sliding color filters for mixing colors, and arrays of nozzles that could be adjusted, their direction changed by hydraulic or pneumatic actuators.Later water fountains
The Dancing Waters style of water show is a linear display of pumps and lights. In the United States, similar fountains are the Musical Waters. Musical Waters shows use the basic Dancing Waters mechanics. The fountains use single-speed pumps and do not offer variable water heights, and the revolving nozzles are not present since the Dancing Waters design having been prone to jamming. Despite lacking the rotating nozzles that usually define this type of show, the Musical Waters shows are one of the few of this kind that still retain most of the simple elegance that defined Otto Przystawik's first fountains, including the visual attraction of the human element with live "fountaineers" controlling the effects. Otto Przystawik water shows went well beyond previous musical fountains. While previous fountain merely change scenes during a performance, Przystawik introduced moving water that created the first true Dancing Fountains.Image:Bellagio Fountains 2005.jpg|thumb|Dancing fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas
Other United States based companies such as Waltzing Waters Inc, owned by Przystawik's family, WET, Fontana Fountains, Atlantic Fountains, Fountain People, Formosa Fountains, Hall Fountains, and Waterworks International have built fully computer controlled musical fountains since 1980. These include wide systems available to the homeowner as well as large corporate, municipal and show fountains in excess of fifty meters in length—and in the case of WET's Fountains of Bellagio, in size. These include proportional, interactive and audio spectral control that bring musical fountains to a wide audience. Fountain shapes are not limited to linear layout stage shows but include geometric and freeform shapes as well. Moreover, latest technology allows the construction of floating watershows. Fontana Fountains first introduced the use of stainless-steel floaters allowing bigger water show applications even in coasts and lakes.
Manufacturers in the Near and Far East, in places such as India and Pakistan, also produce musical fountains. Many of them have updated the look with individually servomotor-controlled nozzles, large water screens on which video can be projected, and laser effects. Shows are built not only in the standard linear form, but in circular, semicircular and oblong shapes, in multiple pools, and many other layouts. In many places in India, a musical fountain is a must-have attraction for any city, and there will often be at least one local company ready to build them. Firms also rent shows.
International Fountain
Built for the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle in 1962, the International Fountain's original design had changing water and light patterns, with a background of classical music The fountain was very large, designed as a concrete bowl around a 'moonscape' of broken limestone, at the center of which was a tiled dome studded with pointy black nozzles. The fountain was not originally designed for interaction but was redesigned in 1995 by WET to make the fountain more inviting, interactive and safe. Switching out the multicolored lights for white, WET added fog nozzles, a ring of their MicroShooters set into the pavers around the base of the dome, and four large SuperShooters hidden in the upper surface of the dome. The restored fountain behaves as its predecessor did for most of the day, producing changing water patterns as music plays, but it now marks each hour & half hour by bringing out other effects such as fog, and performs a choreographed show. The white lights were later changed to color RGB fixtures in 2021 by WET.CESC Fountain of Joy, Kolkata
The CESC Fountain of Joy was inaugurated in 1991 in Kolkata, India, as part of the tricentennial celebrations. In 2005, it was shut down due to technical problems. The fountain was reopened in October 2012 following a renovation.The fountain features 150 channels available for water and light effects while the old fountain had only 20 water spouts. It has a centre-fed circular water screen of height and width. In the upper pool, the CESC Fountain of Joy has 99 water effects, while the intermediate pool has 20 water effects and another 30 special water effects in the lower pool. It features a large water cascading area – more than long from upper pool to the intermediate pool. The CESC Fountain of Joy comes with an enormous number of lights including LED, PAR lamps and high watt reflectors, capable of constantly changing the colours to make the fountain attractive and eye-catching. According to CESC sources, the Fountain of Joy is integrated with ultra-fast technology, in which water effects will be controlled by the pneumatically assisted solenoid valves, capable of opening and shutting 12 times in a second, thereby resulting in water shooting in air at a spectacular speed. One of the project engineer's claimed that "the concept of a three-tier fountain pool surrounded by architectural and dynamic fountains in the intermediate and lower pools is quite unique in this subcontinent".