Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/501

 I find a definite announcement in 1792, in the first number of the Diary or Lowdon's Register, of February 12th, in which Messrs. Dodds & Claus, musical instrument manufacturers, 66 Queen Street, announce the "forte piano of their make, with their own improvements."

Piano-manufacturing in New England was begun by Benjamin Crehore, in Boston, as early as 1798. He had a workshop at Milton, Mass., where he made violins and violoncellos many years previously, but his first piano was produced some time in that year. His workshop proved to be a national school for the art, so to speak, for Alpheus Babcock and John Osborn, the celebrated piano manufacturers of the period, with whom Jonas Chickering learned his business, were apprentices of Crehore's. The first Chickering, therefore, sprang indirectly from the hitter's modest factory.

The pioneer makers in New York were Davis, Gibson, Kersing, and Geib—names now almost forgotten, although old instruments of their production may be found occasionally in piano ware-rooms and country houses. All of these were in business before 1800 and upward, but they never attained prominence or wealth.

The piano industry had attained some footing in America toward 1829, despite foreign competition, for in that year twenty-five hundred pianos were made here—nine hundred being produced in Philadelphia, eight hundred in New York, seven hundred and seventeen in Boston, and a considerable number in Baltimore and Cincinnati. At that period the Loud Brothers, of Philadelphia, were the leading American makers—a position assumed by Chickering & Mackay toward 1840. In Boston, Osborn, Jonas Chickering, and Alpheus Babcock were established—the former being one of the most distinguished of native piano-makers. Babcock, who produced and patented his skeleton iron plate in 1825, moved to Philadelphia in 1830, where he lived for a few years.

Jonas Chickering began business in 1823, in partnership with James Stewart, a practical piano-maker and inventor. Stewart had been previously in business in Baltimore, but came North to become a partner of Osborn, with whom he quarreled in a short time, when a separation ensued. In 1826 Stewart went to