Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/596

Rh Thom patented the invention in January 1820

but the instrument being poor in the tone failed to bring him pecuniary reward or the credit he deserved. Southwell appears to have been one of the first to pront by Hawkins's ideas by bringing out the high cabinet pianoforte, with hinged sticker action, in 1807. All that he could, however, patent in it was the simple damper action, turning on a pivot to relieve the dampers from the strings, which is still frequently used with such actions. The next steps for producing the lower or cottage upright piano were taken by Robert Wornum, who in 1811 produced a diagonally, and in 1813 a vertically, strung one. Wornum's perfected crank action (ng. 29) was not complete until 1826, when it was patented for a cabinet piano; but it was not really introduced until three years later, 1 when Wornum applied it to his little “ piccolo.”-The principle of this centred lever check action was introduced into Paris by Pleyell and Pape, "' < and thence into Germany and America. Q 1 It was not, however, from Hawkins's inven- "X tion that iron became introduced as essential to ' the structure of a pianoforte. This Allen' was due to William Allen, a young '/N Scotsman in the emplov of the Stodarts. He devised a metal system of framing intended primarily for compensation, but soon to become, in other hands, a framing for resistance. His idea was to meet the divergence in tuning caused in brass and iron strings by atmospheric changes by compensating tubes and plates of the same metals, guaranteeing their stability by a cross batoning of stout wooden bars and a metal bar across the wrest-plank. Allen, being simply a tuner, had not the full practical knowledge for carrying out the idea. He had to ally himself “fl The firm of Stodart at once acquired the patent. li f with Stodart's foreman, Thom; and Allen and / " 1 We have now arrived
 * E, at an important epoch

Qi n in pianoforte construction-the abolition, at FIG. 29.»-Womum's Upright Action, 1826. The original of the now universal crank action l least in England and France, of the wooden favour of a combined construction of iron and wood, the former material gradually asserting pre-eminence. Allen's 1 design is shown in fig. 3o. The long bars shown in the diagram are really tubes fixed at one end only; those of iron lie over the iron or steel wire, while lie over the metal plates are attached same correonce a great advance was made in the possibility of using heavier strings than could be stretched before, without danger to the durability of the case and frame. The next step was in 1821, to a fixed iron string-plate, the invention of one of Broadwood's workmen, Samuel instance applied to one of the square pianos of that irm. The great advantage in the fixed plate was a more even solid counterpoise to the drawing or tension of the strings and the abolition of their undue length 1Pleyel exhibited a small upright piano in Paris in 1827~ Pierre Erard did not turn his attention to upright pianos until 1831. , 7 in upright pianos. construction in
 * » ' umnqu:

those of brass brass wire, the 1 to which they 1 being in the spondence. At

F ic. 30 -Allen's Compensating Grand Piano, 1820. The first complete metal framing system applied over the strings. Hervé which was in the first behind the bridge, a reduction which Isaac Carter” had tried some years before, but unsuccessfully, to accomplish with a plate of wood. So generally was attention now given to improved methods of resistance that it has not been found possible to determine who f1rst practically introduced those long iron or steel resistance bars which are so familiar a feature in modern grand pianos. They were experimented on as substitutes for the wooden bracing by Joseph Smith in 1798; but to James Broadwood belongs the credit of trying them first above the sound-board in the treble part of the scale as long ago as 1808, and again in 1818; he did not succeed, however, in fixing them properly. The introduction of fixed resistance bars is really due to observation of Allen's compensating tubes, which were, at the same time, resisting. Sebastian and Pierre Erard seem to have been first in the field in 1823 with a complete system of nine resistance bars from treble to bass, with a simple mode of fastening them through the sound-board to the wooden beams beneath, but, although these bars appear in their patent of 1824, which chiefly concerned their repetition action, the Erards did not either in France or England claim them as of original invention, nor is there any string-plate combined with them in their patent. James Broadwood, by his patent of 1827, claimed the combination of string-plate and resistance bars, which was clearly the completion of the wood and metal instrument, differing from Allen's in the nature of the resistance being fixed. Broadwood, however, left the brass bars out, but added a fourth bar in the middle to the three in the treble he had previously used. It must be borne in mind that it was the trebles that gave way in the old wooden construction before the tenor and bass of the instrument. But the weight of the stringing was always increasing, and a heavy close over spinning of the bass strings had become general. The resistance bars were increased to five, six, seven, eight and, as we have seen, even nine, according to the ideas of the different English and French makers who used them in their pursuit of stability. The next important addition to the grand piano in order of time was the harmo11ic bar of Pierre Erard, introduced in 1838. This was a gun-metal bar of alternate pressing and drawing power by means of screws which were tapped into the wrest plank immediately above the treble bearings, mak-ing that part of the instrument nearly immovable, this favoured the production of higher harmonics to the treble notes, recognized in what we commonly call “ ring.” A, similar bar, subsequently 1 extended by Broadwood across the entire wrest- /" plank, was to prevent 77/ % any tendency in the / wrest-plank to rise, from, fl the combined upward drawing of the strings. A Z, /, method of fastening the l g strings on the string-plate, . depending upon friction, 1 / and thus dispensing with / “ eyes, ” was a contri- V Q'-" bution of the Collards, fi 1 who had retained James Stewart, a man of con- g siderable inventive power, who had been in America with Chickering. This invention was introduced FIG. 31.-Broadwood's Iron Grand Piano, 1 884. Complete iron frame with diagonal resistance bar. in 1827. Between 1847 and 1849 2 Sometime foreman to the pianoforte maker Mott, who attracted much attention by a piano with sostenente effect, produced by a roller and silk attachments in 1817. But a sostenente piano, however perfect, is no longer a true piano such as Beethoven and Chopin wrote for.