Musical Fountains

Have you heard of anything such as musical fountains? A musical fountain is "a type of animated fountain for entertainment purposes that creates an aesthetic design". This is done by timing sound waves and light that includes lasers against the water particles. The water "refracts and reflects the light, and in doing so, three-dimensional images can be produced". There can be hundreds of water jets and lights that can cost up into the millions of dollars. $1,000 is possible for smaller household fountains. The musical fountain requires mechanical, hydraulic, electrical and electronic components.

The earliest fountains required a live operator to manually control the pumps, valves and sometimes the lights. Later, the choreography was then able to be prerecorded on punched paper cards which would then be scanned by a computer. It was then possible for the choreography to be recorded on magnetic tape or CD, including the music.

One of the earliest fountains was the Bodor Fountain, built between 1820 and 1822 by Hungarian gadgeteer and mechanical engineer Peter Bodor, in Targu Mures, Romania, formerly known as the town of Marosvasarhely. The fountain had a round-floor plan, two arched stairs on the sides and a pillar-supported dome roof. At every hour, popular chimes would be played by the force of water that was driven by a hydraulic structure. It was never restored after it had been destroyed by a snow storm in 1836.

Since the 1980s in the United States, musical fountains have been controlled by computers. Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure Park has a nighttime show called World of Color. The show cost $75,000,000 over approximately 15 months to design, manufacture and build. The show has lights, water, fire, fog, lasers, high-definition projections on mist screens and more than 1,200 fountains.

Other places besides the United States that have musical fountains include Argentina, China, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.