The history of fretless zithers is replete with inventions intended to ease the production of chords, first patented in one country and then claimed by someone else shortly thereafter, in a patent issued in another country. When the dates are close enough, it can be difficult to determine who should be credited with the actual innovation. Similarities do sometimes appear to be coincidental but plagiarism was common enough.
The assessment of such situations can be made more difficult by the widespread practice of marking an instrument with the date and number of the first patent issued for it, even if the model at hand incorporates details that do not figure in that patent. One frequently cited example is the way Charles F. Zimmermann applied the number and date of a well-known patent US257808 issued to him in the United States on 9 May 1882.
It was quite specific in the claimed design of the damping bars and soundbox contour of the “autoharp” that it introduced literally and musically. However, Zimmermann modified both of these structural details significantly before commencing the production of instruments on a large scale. He did so without patenting any aspect of that redesign and labeled all of his autoharps with the date and number of the initial patent.
The changes he made to the bar action propagated into European designs in a sequence that is substantiated by other documents. However, what is now regarded as the definitive contour of the instrument’s soundbox is first attested on 11 March 1885 in the complete (i.e., revised) specification for a British patent (GB188408888) and it is unclear if it was among Zimmermann’s unprotected modifications. Although the questioned form is not claimed in any patent, pivotal significance is often ascribed to it in the current discussion of the instrument’s origin (albeit inconsistently, as demonstrated in a performance on a rectangular autoharp here).
Numerous alternatives to the autoharp appeared in short order, some triggering conflicting claims of invention on both sides of the Atlantic. One of them was anchored in a German Imperial Patent for a “Zither” that was applied for on 1 May 1887 by Theodor Meinhold, who was to become a major combatant in a legal battle over rights to the manufacture and sale of autoharps in Germany. The patent entered into effect on the same date and was published as DE42967 on 6 April 1888.
It illustrates several devices, of which the following one is a stationary alternative to the mobile chord bars on an autoharp. It consists of a fixed metal plate with openings that permit the strings belonging to a given chord to be plucked in a single sweeping motion, while shielding the strings not belonging to that chord.
Another of Meinhold’s German patents entered into effect on 30 April 1891 as DE60200, for a “Zither with overlaid music sheet” (Zither mit aufgelegtem Notenblatt). It adapts a punch-card system to an instrument with the profile of an autoharp, harnessing a device that was fundamental to the burgeoning varieties of mechanical musical instruments that were truly playable by anyone without the slightest musical ability.
The individual openings in the overlay card closest to the tuning pins correspond to the notes in the melody. They are played with a plectrum inserted into each slot in the order indicated by the serpentine arrow beginning in the lower left corner of the illustration. The three rows of slots at the hitchpin side are for accompaniment chords and correspond directly to the chord plate in the earlier patent. The added slots for the melody facilitate what otherwise would have required some skill to play on the open strings.
There is no way to tell if this was influenced by an intervening US patent for a “Music-Chart” applied for on 27 August 1890 by James Dodd, and issued as US452995 on 26 May 1891.
In using the chart with the zither or similar instrument the chart is placed under the strings or between the strings and the sounding-board in such a way that the vertical lines of the chart are exactly under the strings of the instrument.
There is little doubt that Meinhold, by this time, was keeping a close eye on zither-related patents in the US (and likely elsewhere). As already noted, his punch-card device also has clear roots in the mechanical instrument world. The next question then becomes if Dodd played a role in the application of underlay charts to another autoharp derivate called a Phonoharp.
This mirrors the chord plate of Meinhold’s 1887 patent and shows an underlay chart one year before Dodd’s patent. What may or may not have been an independent additional voice entered into this with a US patent application titled “Harp,” filed on 17 January 1891 by William Batchelder (a piano tuner in Boston), and issued as US456977 on 4 August 1891.
My invention relates especially to an attachment for small harps, zithers and similar instruments, whereby a set of strings forming chords may be struck without setting the adjacent or unharmonious strings into vibration; and it consists in certain novel features, hereinafter fully set forth and claimed, the object being to produce a simpler, cheaper, and more effective device of this character than is now in ordinary use.
The “device…now in ordinary use” can hardly have been anything other than the aggregate of bars on an autoharp, which also provided all details of the body on which the replacement device is shown mounted. This alternative profile also came to be marketed by the “Phonoharp Company,” alongside the one in the preceding advertisement. Here is a photograph of a Model 21 Phonoharp with a mounted underlay chart in the Rick Meyers Collection of Fretless Zithers, who I thank for providing it together with the illustration from the 1889 catalog.
On 13 October 1891, Meinhold filed another German patent application, for a “Zither with music sheets placed under the strings” (Zither mit unter den Saiten angeordnetem Notenblatte), subheading it a supplement to DE60200. This was six months after his earlier filing and two after the issuance of Batcholder’s patent. The supplement to it was published as DE63702 on 10 August 1892 after a review period of noteworthy length.
Meinhold’s added claims included a change in the positioning of the music chart from above the strings to below them, a device for fastening it there, and an implementation of the chord plate that introduced the present discussion. Here is one of the drawings from DE63702.
This was surely a direct response to the Phonoharp. Since a patent only confers protection in the country where it is issued, this back-and-forth transatlantic copycatting did not intrinsically violate any national laws. In fact, Section 25 of the US Patent Act of 1870 states:
That no person shall be debarred from receiving a patent for his invention or discovery, nor shall any patent be declared invalid, by reason of its having been first patented or caused to be patented in a foreign country; provided the same shall not have been introduced into public use in the United States for more than two years prior to the application…
As discussed in detail in a previous post, Meinhold later licensed his German patents for the overlay and underlay charts to the firm of Menzenhauer & Schmidt, which operated in both Germany and the US, and therefore needed to heed the patent laws of both. Oscar Schmidt aggressively and successfully defended the national rights to the underlay charts conferred by the German patents. Despite their questionable applicability elsewhere, the use of those patent numbers on the charts marketed with Menzenhauer’s guitar zither in the US does not appear to have been challenged.
Meinhold submitted an application for a US patent for a “Zither Attachment” on 23 February 1893. It claimed the invention of “certain new and useful Improvements in Zithers with Interchangeable Music-Sheets” and was issued as US498561 on 30 May 1893. It removes the chord plate from the design in his supplementary German patent but is otherwise identical to it.
This may indicate that he was aware of having missed the two-year window during which he would have needed to market or patent an implementation of his chord plate in the US to preclude Batchelder, or anyone else, from patenting it there. Although underlay charts were protected by prior US patents, none claims specific means for securing them to a zither. Meinhold was therefore less circumspect in that regard. He included underlay charts in his own US patent but placed emphasis on:
…devices for attaching to zithers the music sheet of the tunes to be played …placing the music sheet under the strings and between the grooved guide-bars and in a device for locking the music sheet in proper position relative to the strings…
C. F. Zimmermann’s eldest son, Charles Gustav, obtained a US patent in January 1892 for a chord plate zither that is barely distinguishable from Batchelder’s. There is no question about the senior Zimmermann being able to claim priority for the design of its body, and Charles Gustav can plausibly have been acting to avert the competitive threat to his family’s enterprise posed by the nascent Phonoharp Company. The Harmony Harp that was the upshot of the Zimmermann action is discussed further in a separate post.