Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883

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The next decade, 1790-1800, brings us to French grand pianoforte-making,
which was then taken up by Sebastian Erard. This ingenious mechanic and
inventor traveled the long and dreary road along which nearly all who
have tried to improve the pianoforte have had to journey. He appears, at
first, to have adopted the existing model of the English instrument in
resonance, tension, and action, and to have subsequently turned his
attention to the action, most likely with the idea of combining the
English power of gradation with the German lightness of touch. Erard
claimed, in the specification to a patent for an action, dated 1808,
"the power of giving repeated strokes, without missing or failure, by
very small angular motions of the key itself."

Once fairly started, the notion of repetition became the dominant idea
with pianoforte-makers, and to this day, although less insisted upon,
engrosses time and attention that might be more usefully directed. Some
great players, from their point of view of touch, have been downright
opposed to repetition actions. I will name Kalkbrenner, Chopin, and, in
our own day, Dr. Hans von Buelow. Yet the Erard's repetition, in the form
of Hertz's reduction, is at present in greater favor in America and
Germany, and is more extensively used, than at any previous period.

The good qualities of Erard's action, completed in 1821, the germ of
which will be found in the later Cristofori, are not, however, due to
repetition capability, but to other causes, chiefly, I will say, to
counterpoise. The radical defect of repetition is that the repeated
note can never have the tone-value of the first; it depends upon the
mechanical contrivance, rather than the finder of the player, which is
directly indispensable to the production of satisfactory tone. When the
sensibility of the player's touch is lost in the mechanical action, the
corresponding sensibility of the tone suffers; the resonance is not,
somehow or other, sympathetically excited.

Erard rediscovered an upward bearing, which had been accomplished by
Cristofori a hundred years before, in 1808. A down-bearing bridge to the
wrest-plank, with hammers striking upward, are clearly not in relation;
the tendency of the hammer must be, if there is much force used, to
lift the string from its bearing, to the detriment of the tone. Erard
reversed the direction of the bearing of the front bridge, substituting
for a long, pinned, wooden bridge, as many little brass bridges as there
were notes. The strings passing through holes bored through the little
bridges, called agraffes, or studs, turned upward toward the wrest-pin.
By this the string was forced against its rest instead of off it. It
is obvious that the merit of this invention would in time make its use
general. A variety of it was the long brass bridge, specially used
in the treble on account of the pleasant musical-box like tone its
vibration encouraged. Of late years another upward bearing has found
favor in America and on the Continent, the Capo d'Astro bar of M. Bord,
which exerts a pressure upon the strings at the bearing point.

About the year 1820, great changes and improvements were made in the
grand pianoforte both externally and in the instrument. The harpsichord
boxed up front gave way to the cylinder front, invented by Henry Pape,
a clever German pianoforte-maker who bad settled in Paris. Who put the
pedals upon the familiar lyre I have not been able to learn. It would
be in the Empire time, when a classical taste was predominant. But the
greatest change was from a wooden resisting structure to one in which
iron should play an important part. The invention belongs to this
country, and is due to a tuner named William Allen, a young Scotchman,
who was in Stodart's employ. With the assistance of the foreman, Thom,
the invention was completed, and a patent was taken out, dated the 15th
of January, 1820, in which Thom was a partner. The patent was, however,
at once secured by the Stodarts, their employers. The object of the
patent was a combination of metal tubes with metal plates, the metallic
tubes extending from the plates which were attached to the string-block
to the wrest-plank. The metal plates now held the hitch-pins, to which
the farther ends of the strings were fixed, and the force of the tension
was, in a great measure, thrown upon the tubes. The tubes were a
mistake; they were of iron over the steel strings, and brass over the
brass and spun strings, the idea being that of the compensation of
tuning when affected by atmospheric change, also a mistake. However,
the tubes were guaranteed by stout wooden bars crossing them at right
angles. At once a great advance was made in the possibility of using
heavier strings, and the great merit of the invention was everywhere
recognized.

James Broadwood was one of the first to see the importance of the
invention, if it were transformed into a stable principle. He had tried
iron tension bars in past years, but without success. It was now due to
his firm to introduce a fixed stringed plate, instead of plates intended
to shift, and in a few years to combine this plate with four solid
tension bars, for which combination he, in 1827, took out a patent,
claiming as the motive for the patent the string-plate; the manner of
fixing the hitch-pins upon it, the fourth tension bar, which crossed the
instrument about the middle of the scale, and the fastening of that bar
to the wooden brace below, now abutting against the belly-rail, the
attachment being effected by a bolt passing through a hole cut in the
sound-board.

This construction of grand pianoforte soon became generally adopted in
England and France. Messrs. Erard, who appear to have had their own
adaptation of tension bars, introduced the harmonic bar in 1838. This,
a short bar of gun metal, was placed upon the wrest-plank immediately
above the bearings of the treble, and consolidated the plank by screws
tapped into it of alternate pressure and drawing power. In the original
invention a third screw pressed upon the bridge. By this bar a very
light, ringing treble tone was gained. This was followed by a long
harmonic bar extending above the whole length of the wrest-plank, which
it defends from any tendency to rise, by downward pressure obtained by
screws. During 1840-50, as many as five and even six tension bars were
used in grand pianofortes, to meet the ever increasing strain of
thicker stringing. The bars were strutted against a metal edging to the
wrest-plank, while the ends were prolonged forward until they abutted
against its solid mass on the key-board side of the tuning-pins. The
space required for fixing them cramped the scale, while the strings were
divided into separate batches between them. It was also difficult to
so adjust each bar that it should bear its proportionate share of the
tension; an obvious cause of inequality.

Toward the end of this period a new direction was taken by Mr. Henry
Fowler Broadwood, by the introduction of an iron-framed pianoforte, in
which the bars should be reduced in number, and with the bars the steel
arches, as they were still called, although they were no longer arches
but struts.

In a grand pianoforte, made in 1847, Mr. Broadwood succeeded in
producing an instrument of the largest size, practically depending upon
iron alone. Two tension bars sufficed, neither of them breaking into the
scale: the first, nearly straight, being almost parallel with the lowest
bass string; the second, presenting the new feature of a diagonal bar
crossed from the bass corner to the string-plate, with its thrust at an
angle to the strings.

There were reasons which induced Mr. Broadwood to somewhat modify and
improve this framing, but with the retention of its leading feature, the
diagonal bar, which was found to be of supreme importance in bearing the
tension where it is most concentrated. From 1852, his concert grands
have had, in all, one bass bar, one diagonal bar, a middle bar with
arch beneath, and the treble cheek bar. The middle bar is the only one
directly crossing the scale, and breaking it. It is strengthened by
feathered ribs, and is fastened by screws to the wooden brace below. The
three bars and diagonal bar, which is also feathered, abut firmly on the
string plate, which is fastened down to the wooden framing by screws.
Since 1862, the wooden wrest-plank has been covered with a plate of
iron, the iron screw-pin plate bent at a right angle in front. The
wrest-pins are screwed into this plate, and again in the wood below.
The agraffes, which take the upward bearings of the strings, are firmly
screwed into this plate. The long harmonic bar of gun metal lies
immediately above the agraffes, and crossing the wrest-plank in its
entire width, serves to keep it, at the bearing line, in position. This
construction is the farthest advance of the English pianoforte.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--WILLIAM ALLEN.]

Almost simultaneously with it has arisen a new development in America,
which, beginning with Conrad Meyer, about 1833, has been advanced by the
Chickerings and Steinways to the well known American and German grand
pianoforte of the present day. It was perfected in America about in
1859, and has been taken up since by the Germans almost universally, and
with very little alteration. Two distinct principles have been developed
and combined--the iron framing in a single casting, and the cross or
overstringing. I will deal with the last first, because it originated in
England and was the invention of Theobald Boehm, the famous improver of
the flute. In Grove's "Dictionary," I have given an approximate date to
his overstringing as 1835, but reference to Boehm's correspondence with
Mr. Walter Broadwood shows me that 1831 was really the time, and
that Boehm employed Gerock and Wolf, of 79 Cornhill, London, musical
instrument makers, to carry out his experiment. Gerock being opposed
to an oblique direction of the strings and hammers, Boehm found a more
willing coadjutor in Wolf. As far as I can learn, a piccolo, a cabinet,
and a square piano were thus made overstrung. Boehm's argument was that
a diagonal was longer within a square than a vertical, which, as he
said, every schoolboy knew. The first overstrung grand pianos seen in
London were made by Lichtenthal, of St. Petersburg; not so much for tone
as for symmetry of the case; two instruments so made were among the
curiosities of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Some years before this,
Henry Pape had made experiments in cross stringing, with the intention
to economize space. His ideas were adopted and continued by the London
maker, Tomkisson, who acquired Pape's rights for this country. The iron
framing in a single casting is a distinctly American invention, but
proceeding, like the overstringing, from a German by birth. The iron
casting for a square piano of the American Alpheus Babcock, may have
suggested Meyer's invention; it was, however, Conrad Meyer, who,
in Philadelphia, and in 1833, first made a real iron frame square
pianoforte. The gradual improvement upon Meyer's invention, during the
next quarter of a century, are first due to the Chickerings and then
the Steinways. The former overstrung an iron frame square, the latter
overstrung an iron frame grand, the culmination of this special make
since of general American and German adoption. It will be seen that, in
the American make, the number of tension bars has not been reduced, but
a diagonal support has, to a certain extent, been accepted and adopted.
The sound-board bridges are much further apart than obtains with the
English grand, or with the Anglo-French Erard. The advocates of the
American principle point out the advantages of a more open scale, and
more equal pressure on the sound-board. They likewise claim, as a gain,
a greater tension. I have no quite accurate information as to what
the sum of the tension may be of an American grand piano. One of
Broadwood's, twenty years ago, had a strain of sixteen and one-half
tons; the strain has somewhat increased since then. The remarkable
improvement in wiredrawing which has been made in Birmingham, Vienna,
and Nuremberg, of late years, has rendered these high tensions of far
easier attainment than they would have been earlier in the century.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--BROADWOOD.]

For me the great drawback to one unbroken casting is in the vibratory
ring inseparable from any metal system that has no resting places to
break the uniform reverberation proceeding from metal. We have already
seen how readily the strings take up vibrations which are only pure
when, as secondary vibrations, they arise by reversion from the
sound-board. If vibration arises from imperfectly elastic wood, we hear
a dull wooden thud; if it comes from metal, partials of the strings are
re-enforced that should be left undeveloped, which give a false ring to
the tone, and an after ring that blurs _legato_ playing, and nullifies
the _staccato_. I do not pose as the obstinate advocate of parallel
stringing, although I believe that, so far, it is the most logical and
the best; the best, because the left hand division of the instrument is
free from a preponderance of dissonant high partials, and we hear the
light and shade, as well as the cantabile of that part, better than by
any overstrung scale that I have yet met with. I will not, I say, offer
a final judgment, because there may come a possible improvement of the
overstrung or double diagonal scale, if that scale is persisted in, and
inventive power is brought to bear upon it, as valuable as that which
has carried the idea thus far.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--BROADWOOD.]

I have not had time to refer other than incidentally to the square
pianoforte, which has become obsolete. I must, however, give a separate
historical sketch of the upright pianoforte, which has risen into
great favor and importance, and in its development--I may say its
invention--belongs to this present 19th century. The form has always
recommended the upright on the score of convenience, but it was long
before it occurred to any one to make an upright key board instrument
reasonably. Upright harpsichords were made nearly four hundred years
ago. A very interesting 17th century one was sold lately in the
great Hamilton sale--sold, I grieve to say, to be demolished for its
paintings. But all vertical harpsichords were horizontal ones, put on
end on a frame; and the book-case upright grand pianos, which, from the
eighties, were made right into the present century, were horizontal
grands similarly elevated. The real inventor of the upright piano, in
its modern and useful form, was that remarkable Englishman, John Isaac
Hawkins, the inventor of ever-pointed pencils; a civil engineer, poet,
preacher, and phrenologist. While living at Border Town, New Jersey, U.
S. A., Hawkins invented the cottage piano--portable grand, he called
it--and his father, Isaac Hawkins, to whom, in Grove's "Dictionary,"
I have attributed the invention, took out, in the year 1800[1], the
English patent for it. I can fortunately show you one of these original
pianinos, which belongs to Messrs. Broadwood. It is a wreck, but you
will discern that the strings descend nearly to the floor, while the
key-board, a folding one, is raised to a convenient height between the
floor and the upper extremities of the strings. Hawkins had an iron
frame and tension rods, within which the belly was entirely suspended;
a system of tuning by mechanical screws; an upper metal bridge; equal
length of string throughout; metal supports to the action, in which a
later help to the repetition was anticipated--the whole instrument being
independent of the case. Hawkins tried also a lately revived notion of
coiled strings in the bass, doing away with tension. Lastly, he sought
for a _sostinente_, which has been tried for from generation to
generation, always to fail, but which, even if it does succeed, will
produce another kind of instrument, not a pianoforte, which owes so much
of its charm to its unsatiating, evanescent tone.

[Transcribers note 1: 3rd digit illegible, best guess from context.]

[Illustration: Fig. 5.--MEYER.]

Once introduced into Hawkins' native country, England, the rise of the
upright piano became rapid. In 1807, at latest, the now obsolete high
cabinet piano was fairly launched. In 1811, Wornum produced a diagonal.
In 1813, a vertical cottage piano. Previously, essays had been made to
place a square piano upright on its side, for which Southwell, an Irish
maker, took out a patent in 1798; and I can fortunately show you one of
these instruments, kindly lent for this paper by Mr. Walter Gilbey. I
have also been favored with photographs by Mr. Simpson, of Dundee, of a
precisely similar upright square. I show his drawing of the action--the
Southwell sticker action. W. F. Collard patented another similar
experiment in 1811. At first the sticker action with a leather hinge
to the hammer-butt was the favorite, and lasted long in England. The
French, however, were quick to recognize the greater merit of Wornum's
principle of the crank action, which, and strangely enough through
France, has become very generally adopted in England, as well as Germany
and elsewhere. I regret I am unable to show a model of the original
crank action, but Mr. Wornum has favored me with an early engraving of
his father's invention. It was originally intended for the high cabinet
piano, and a patent was taken out for it in 1826. But many difficulties
arose, and it was not until 1829 that the first cabinet was so finished.
Wornum then applied it in the same year to the small upright--the
piccolo, as he called it--the principle of which was, through Pleyel and
Pape, adopted for the piano manufacture in Paris. Within the last few
years we have seen the general introduction of Bord's little pianino,
called in England, ungrammatically enough, pianette, in the action of
which that maker cleverly introduced the spiral spring. And, also, of
those large German overstrung and double overstrung upright pianos,
which, originally derived from America, have so far met with favor and
sale in this country as to induce some English makers, at least in the
principle, to copy them.

[Illustration: Fig. 6.--STEINWAY.]

I will conclude this historical sketch by remarking, and as a remarkable
historical fact, that the English firms which in the last century
introduced the pianoforte, to whose honorable exertions we owe a debt of
gratitude, with the exception of Stodart, still exist, and are in the
front rank of the world's competition. I will name Broadwood (whose flag
I serve under), Collard (in the last years of the last century known
as Longman and Clementi), Erard (the London branch), Kirkman, and, I
believe, Wornum. On the Continent there is the Paris Erard house; and,
at Vienna, Streicher, a firm which descends directly from Stein of
Augsburg, the inventor of the German pianoforte, the favorite of Mozart,
and of Beethoven in his virtuoso period, for he used Stein's grands at
Bonn. Distinguished names have risen in the present century, some of
whom have been referred to. To those already mentioned, I should like
to add the names of Hopkinson and Brinsmead in England; Bechstein and
Bluthner in Germany; all well-known makers.

* * * * *

THE POISONOUS PROPERTIES OF NITRATE OF SILVER, AND A RECENT CASE OF
POISONING WITH THE SAME.

[Footnote: Read before the Medico Legal Society, April 5, 1883.]

By HENRY A. MOTT, JR., Ph.D., etc.

Of the various salts of silver, the nitrate, both crystallized and in
sticks (lunar caustic, _Lapis infernalis_), is the only one interesting
to the toxicologist.

This salt is an article of commerce, and is used technically and
medicinally.

Its extensive employment for marking linen, in the preparation of
various hair dyes (Eau de Perse, d'Egypte, de Chiene, d'Afrique), in the
photographer's laboratory, etc., affords ample opportunity to use the
same for poisoning purposes.

Nitrate of silver possesses an acrid metallic taste and acts as a
violent poison.

When injected into a vein of an animal, even in small quantities, the
symptoms produced are dyspnoea,[1] choking, spasms of the limbs and then
of the trunk, signs of vertigo, consisting of inability to stand erect
or walk steadily, and, finally retching and vomiting, and death by
asphyxia. These symptoms, which have usually been attributed to the
coagulating action of the salt upon the blood, have been shown not to
depend upon that change, which, indeed, does not occur, but upon a
direct paralyzing operation upon the cerebro-spinal centers and upon
the heart; but the latter action is subordinate and secondary, and the
former is fatal through asphyxia.

[Footnote 1: Nat. Dispensatory. Alf. Stille & John M. Maisch, Phila.,
1879, p. 232.]

One-third of a grain injected into the jugular vein killed a dog in four
and one-half hours, with violent tetanic spasms.[1]

[Footnote 1: Medical Jurisprudence. Thomas S. Traill, 1857, p 117.]

Devergie states that acute poisoning with nitrate of silver,
administered in the shape of pills, is more frequent than one would
suppose. Yet Dr. Powell[1] states that it should always be given in
pills, as the system bears a dose three times as large as when given in
solution. The usual dose is from one-quarter of a grain to one grain
three times a day when administered as a medicine. In cases of epilepsy
Dr. Powell recommends one grain at first, to be gradually increased
to six. Clocquet[2] has given as much as fifteen grains in a day, and
Ricord has given sixteen grains of argentum chloratum ammoniacale.

[Footnote 1: U.S. Dispensatory, 18th ed., p. 1049. Wood & Bache.]

[Footnote 2: Handbuch der Giftlehre, von A. W. M. Von Hasselt. 1862, p.
316.]

Cases of poisoning have resulted from sticks of lunar caustic getting
into the stomach in the process of touching the throat (Boerhave)[1];
in one case, according to Albers, a stick of lunar caustic got into the
trachea.

[Footnote 1: Virchow's Archiv, Bd. xvii., s. 135. 1859.]

Von Hasselt therefore urges the utmost caution in using lunar caustic;
the sticks and holder should always be carefully examined before use.
An apprentice[1] to an apothecary attempted to commit suicide by taking
nearly one ounce of a solution of nitrate of silver without fatal
result. It must be remarked, however, that the strength of the solution
was not stated.

[Footnote 1: Handbuch der Giftlehre, von A. W. M. Von Hasselt. Zweiter
Theil, 1862. p. 316.]

In 1861, a woman, fifty-one years old, died in three days from the
effects of taking a six-ounce mixture containing fifty grains of nitrate
of silver given in divided doses.[1] She vomited a brownish yellow fluid
before death. The stomach and intestines were found inflamed. It is
stated that silver was found in the substance of the stomach and liver.

[Footnote 1: Treatise on Poison. Taylor, 1875, p. 475.]

It is evident that the poisonous dose, when taken internally, is not so
very small, but still it would not be safe to administer much over the
amounts prescribed by Ricord, for in the case of the dog mentioned one
third of a grain injected into the jugular vein produced death in four
and one-half hours.

The circumstance that more can be taken internally is explained by the
rapid decomposition to which this silver salt is liable in the body by
the proteine substance and chlorine combinations in the stomach, the
hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice, and salt from food.

The first reaction produced by taking nitrate of silver internally is a
combination of this salt with the proteinaceous tissues with which it
comes in contact, as also a precipitation of chloride of silver.

According to Mitscherlich, the combination with the proteine or
albuminous substance is not a permanent one, but suffers a decomposition
by various acids, as dilute acetic and lactic acid.

The absorption of the silver into the system is slow, as the albuminoid
and chlorine combinations formed in the intestinal canal cannot be
immediately dissolved again.

In the tissues the absorbed silver salt is decomposed by the tissues,
and the oxide and metallic silver separate.

Partly for this reason and partly on account of the formation of the
solid albuminates, etc., the elimination of the silver from the body
takes place very slowly. Some of the silver, however, passed out in the
faeces, and, according to Lauderer, Orfila, and Panizza, some can be
detected in the urine.

Bogolowsky[1] has also shown that in rabbits poisoned with preparations
of silver, the (often albuminous) urine and the contents of the (very
full) gall bladder contained silver.

[Footnote 1: Arch. f. Path. Anatomie, xlvi., p. 409. Gaz. Med de Paris,
1868, No. 39. Also Journ. de l'Anatomie et de la Physiologie, 1873, p.
398.]

Mayencon and Bergeret have also shown that in men and rabbits the silver
salt administered is quickly distributed in the body, and is but slowly
excreted by the urine and faeces.

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