106 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



IMPKOVEMEXTS IN MUSICAL INSTKUMENTS. 



Driggs's Improved Piano. In the Annual for 1856, we briefly called atten- 

 tion to an improvement in the piano, invented by Mr. S. B. Driggs, of New 

 York. (See Annual Sci. Dis., 1856, pp. 128, 129.) The foUowing is an 

 additional notice of this improvement: 



Before speaking directly of the new piano, it will be as well to examine the 

 points in the old, which the patents are intended to supersede. The case in 

 the old system is made very stoutly, the wood upon which the whole strain of 

 the strings rests being some two inches in thickness ; this is aided materially by 

 an iron plate or upper frame. It must be understood that the tuning phis, to 

 which one end of the strings is attached, are inserted in a pin block or wrest 

 plank, and pass through holes drilled in the iron frame much larger than the 

 pins, so that there the iron frame bears no portion of the strain, which is all 

 upon the wrest plank attached to the case. If that gives in the least, the whole 

 instrument is disorganized, and whether it gives or not, depends upon the ever 

 variable quality and the seasoned age of the wood. To guard against this as 

 much as possible, and to counterbalance the strain, which is all on the top, a 

 bottom six inches thick is put to the piano, and heavy sustaining blocks of 

 wood fill up the whole interior, leaving only space sufficient for the working 

 of the action. "We here find a vibrating instrument with a monstrously thick 

 non-resonant bottom a non-resonant case, and lumbered to its utmost pos- 

 sible capacity with non-resonant blocks of wood, the only actual vibrating 

 surface being the single sounding board. Upon the slightest reflection this 

 seems all wrong ; for we might as well fill up a fiddle with blocks of wood, or 

 stuff up the interior of a drum, and expect them under such circumstances to 

 produce a pure and resonant tone. 



In Mr. Driggs's pianos is found the exact opposite of all this. The case is a 

 mere shell half an inch in thickness, which merely surrounds the frame. This 

 frame is composed of upper and lower light iron plates and bars, bolted 

 firmly together by means of connecting arms. These arms pass through the 

 wrest plank or pin block, which is entirely disconnected from the case, and 

 thus the whole strain of the strings is borne by the perfect iron frame (not 

 merely an upper plate), and all the strength derived from the wood, which 

 must ever be uncertain, and subject to changes from temperature, is avoided 

 and dispensed with. Solid, compact, and self-sustaining, the iron frame 

 neither yields nor gives, and the strings, when once settled to their proper 

 tension, will remain at that pitch for months, and, practical tuners say, for 

 years. 



Instead of a bottom six inches in thickness, the bottom of Mr. Driggs's 

 piano is but one eighth of an inch thick. It is pressed tightly into a slight 

 frame of scantling, which gives it a convex form, like the back of a violin, and 

 renders it as stiff and sonorous as a drum head. The sounding board proper is 

 pressed into a light iron frame, and is retained stiffly in a form, convex to the 

 bottom like the belly of a violin, and all the space between the bottom and the 

 sounding board is clear and open. Not a block of wood encumbers its area ; 

 it is a vast sound box, with vibrating sides, vibrating top, and vibrating bot- 



