Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/85

Rh 75 he was certainly engaged upon the elementary action described as appertaining to M. Gosselin s piano, of probably German origin. In his long-continued labour of inventing and constructing a double escapement action, Erard appears to have sought to combine the English power of gradation of tone with the German lightness of touch. He took out his first patent for a &quot; repetition &quot; action in 1808, claiming for it &quot; the power of giving repeated strokes without missing or failure, by very small angular motions of the key itself.&quot; He did not, however, succeed in producing his famous repetition, or double escapement action until 1821 ; it was then pa tented by his nephew Pierre Erard, who, when the patent expired in England in 1835, proved a loss from the difficulties of carrying out the invention, which induced the House of Lords to grant an extension of the patent. Although some great pianists have been opposed to double escapement, notably Kalkbrenner, Chopin, and Dr Hans von Billow, Erard s action, in its complete or a shortened form as introduced by Herz, is now more exten sively used than at any former period. Erard invented in of the case ; and in this frame, strengthened by a system of iron resistance rods combined with an iron upper bridge, his sound-board is entirely suspended. An apparatus for FIG. 27. Steinway s Grand Piano Action, 1884. The double escapement as in Erard s, but with shortened balance and usual check. 1808 an upward bearing to the wrest-plank bridge, by means of agraffes or studs of metal through holes in which the strings are made to pass, bearing against the upper side. The wooden bridge with down-bearing strings is clearly not in relation with upward-striking hammers, the tendency of which must be to raise the strings from the bridge, to the detriment of the tone. A long brass bridge on this principle was introduced by William Stodart in 1822. A pressure-bar bearing of later introduction is claimed for the French maker, M. Bord, and is very fre quently employed, by German makers especially. The first to see the importance of iron sharing with wood (ultimately almost supplanting it) in pianoforte framing was a native of England and a civil engineer by profession, John Isaac Hawkins, who has been best known as the inventor of the ever-pointed pencil. He was living at Philadelphia, U.S., when he invented and first produced the familiar cottage pianoforte &quot; portable grand &quot; as he then called it. He patented it in America, his father, Isaac Hawkins, taking out the patent for him in England in the same year, 1800. It will be observed that the illustration here given (fig. 28) represents a wreck ; but a draughtsman s restora tion might be open to question. There had been upright grand pianos as well as upright harpsichords, the horizontal instrument being turned up upon its wider end and a keyboard and action adapted to it. William Southwell, an Irish pianomaker, had, in 1798, tried a similar experiment with a square piano, to be repeated in later years by W. F. Collard of London ; but Hawkins was the first to make a piano, or pianino, with the strings descending to the floor, the keyboard being raised, and this, although at the moment the chief, was not his only merit. He anticipated nearly every discovery that has since been introduced as novel. His instrument is in a complete iron frame, independent FIG. 28. Hawkins s Portable Grand Piano, 1800. An upright instrument, the original of the modern cottage liano or pinnino. In Messrs Bioadwood s museum and mm stored. tuning by mechanical screws regulates the tension of the strings, which are of equal length throughout. The action, in metal .supports, anticipates Wornum s in the checking, and still later ideas in a contrivance for repetition. This remarkable bundle of inventions was brought to London and exhibited by Hawkins himself, 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 profit by Hawkins s ideas by bringing out the high cabinet pianoforte, with hinged sticker action, in 1807. All that he could, how ever, 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 cot tage upright piano were taken by Robert Wornum, who in 1811 produced a dia gonally and in 1813 a vertically strung one. Wornum s perfected crank action was not complete until 1826, when it was patented for a cabinet piano ; but it was not really introduced until three years later, when Wornum applied it to his little &quot;piccolo.&quot; The principle of this centred lever check action was introduced into Paris by Pleyel 1 and Pape, and thence has gone to Germany and America. In Eng land it has now nearly superseded the once favourite leather-hinged action. It was not, however, from Hawkins s invention that iron be- | came introduced as essential to the structure of a pianoforte. This FIG. 29. wornunVs Upright was due to William Allen, a young O f the now nniversalcrank Scotsman in the employ of the action in upright pianos. 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 1 Pleyel exhibited a small upright piano in Paris in 1827. Pierre Erard did not turn his attention to upright pianos until 1831.