American painter Bainbridge Bishop created a color organ for “painting music” on a “hemispherical screen” that was briefly exhibited as part of the P.T. Barnum Museum in New York. Bishop began working on his first color organ in 1875. In 1893, he published an essay, “A Souvenir of the Color Organ, with some Suggestions in Regard to the Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light. With Marginal Notes and Illuminations” (New York, 1893), that provided illustrated diagrams of Bishop’s instruments, which he hoped would be used “on a grand scale” in the augmentation of sacred music in churches and cathedrals.