108 BULLETIN 13G, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



distinguished from the rigid bar with its upright tangent which 

 characterized the clavichord. At first it was made in wing shape, 

 the oblong frame being introduced in 1779. 



"The keyboard instruments then known were nearly or entirely 

 incapable of gradation in the loudness of their tone; hence the new 

 instrument was called a ' piano e forte ' because its main peculiarity 

 was that its tone might be made either loud or soft at the player's 

 will." This contrast in tone was produced by the action of two 

 stops, one called "celeste" and producing a soft tone, while the 

 other was called " forte." " Both are divided into two sections, the 

 bass and the treble; each moved independently of the other by four 

 registers on the front side over the keyboard. The chief interest 

 lies in the forte stop which raises the dampers in two sections by 

 two stops." The mechanism does not interest us at present, but we 

 note that it would be possible for a player on this instrument to 

 produce varied effects — for instance, he could give a loud melody 

 in the treble with a subdued accompaniment in the bass. A ham- 

 merclavier with a compass of four and a half octaves was made by 

 Johann Christoff Jeckel in Worms in 1783. Some of the early 

 pianofortes varied their tone in the same manner, except that, in- 

 stead of stops which were pulled out like those of an organ, the 

 variation was accomplished by levers at the player's left hand, or by 

 knee pedals. 



These early instruments were " single action." The inventors had 

 achieved the production of loud and soft tones, each half of the key- 

 board affected independently of the other, but they had not achieved 

 a sustained tone. In an effort to attain this effect there were many 

 unique instruments, in one of which an apparently sustained tone 

 was produced by reiterated blows from small hammers placed above 

 the ordinary hammers and operated by a flywheel controlled by a 

 pedal. All these experiments were laid aside when certain im- 

 portant changes w 7 ere made in the frame and in the action, or man- 

 ner of placing the hammer in contact with the string. 



The strings in dulcimers and instruments of the spinet group were 

 attached to pegs set in a wooden frame. One of the greatest ad- 

 vances toward the modern piano was the introduction of the iron 

 frame w T hich was patented in 1820 by William Allen, a piano tuner 

 in London, and James Thorne, foreman in a piano factory. The 

 advantage is thus explained by Hopkins : " The greater elasticity of 

 iron as compared with wood does not allow the upper partial tones 

 of a string to die away as soon as they would with the less elastic 

 wood. The consequence is that in instruments where iron or steel 

 preponderates in the framing there is a longer sostenente or singing 

 tone and increasingly so as there is a higher tension or strain on 



