Page:The story of the flute (IA storyofflute1914fitz).djvu/89

 between tone, tune, and the ordinary dimensions of the human hand," Cornelius brought out a flute of his own, which was intended to remedy all Böhm's defects. Most of Ward's changes were adapted from earlier flutes; they are of an extremely minute and technical nature, aiming at an open-keyed system, and though they attracted a good deal of attention at the time, effected no real permanent improvement. One peculiarity of Ward's flute was that the two low C keys were closed by the left hand thumb by means of long traction levers; this poor thumb had to work no less than five keys.

Dorus in 1838 invented a new closed key for G♯, to render the fingering of the Böhm more like that of the old eight-keyed flute. It was adopted by several leading French players, and is still sometimes used, although better forms of closed G♯ keys have since been devised. Many unsuccessful attempts were made by William Card and others to adapt the old, or so-called natural, fingering to the new system. The most notable of these dabblers was Abel Siccama, a very moderate amateur flautist, who patented quite a variety of flutes: the first in 1842. One had but a single key (C♮), and had an open hole for the G for the right hand thumb. Another, called The Diatonic Flute (it was really enharmonic), patented in 1847, though of no real value, was adopted by Richardson, and also by Pratten for a time. Siccama claimed that this instrument equalled the violin in correctness of tune, and that