The post before last made side-by-side comparisons of patents for “zither-like” musical instruments issued in Europe and the USA during the 1880s, attempting to clarify the priority of a few key innovations. The present text extends that discussion into the following decade from a slightly different perspective. It is centered on the role played by an unsung participant whose name provides the title above.
Herbert John Haddan (1838–1911) was a well reputed British patent agent who served inventors in many fields. His involvement with musical instruments began no later than 1877, when he obtained a British patent on behalf of an American violin designer, doing so again in 1879 for one located in Germany. He went on to represent instrument makers on both sides of a growing transatlantic competition in the development of chord bar devices of the type now primarily associated with the autoharp. There were signals, throughout, of his having understood the musical instrument industry beyond the legalities of obtaining patents.
Before delving into specifics, a few general observations about the patenting process may be helpful. They are issued by national authorities and acquiring one in a given country confers no protection in any other. An inventor wanting international coverage needs a separate patent in each country where protection is sought. Legislation and procedures vary from country to country and time to time, as does the scope of a patent.
For instance, the United States Patent Act of 1870 made patents available to “the original and first inventor or discoverer” of whatever the patent was intended to cover, without any requirement for US citizenship. The equivalent British Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852 also permitted a “true and first inventor” to obtain a patent without regard to citizenship, but its implementation effectively required the intermediacy of a patent agent operating in Great Britain. A “communication from abroad” was sent to a freely selected such representative who then dealt with the formalities and correspondence relating to the application.
A good example of this is provided by British Patent no. 1884:8888, commonly cited in discussions of the early history of the autoharp (and considered in detail in several previous posts). The claimed inventions are generally ascribed to Karl August Gütter but the official document is headed “Haddan’s Improvements to Stringed Musical Instruments” and begins:
I, HERBERT JOHN HADDAN, of the firm of Herbert and Company, Patent Agents, of 07, Strand, in the City of Westminster, Civil Engineer, do hereby declare the nature of my invention for IMPROVEMENTS IN STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, a communication to me from abroad by J.M. Grob, of Leipzig, and K.A. Gütter, of Markneukirchen, both in Germany, and in what manner the same is to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained, in and by the following statement:…
Haddan received other such communications from the “C. F. Zimmermann Company” run in the USA by Alfred Dolge, who in 1893 acquired the business operated by Gütter’s erstwhile competitor, Charles Zimmermann. Shortly after that transition, Rudolf Dolge (Alfred’s son), sent the new organization’s first request for British representation to Reginald Haddan (Herbert’s son; both in the family businesses).
The resulting patent application was headed “Haddan’s Improvements in Harps, Zithers, and similar Musical Instruments” and submitted on 12 December 1893. It duplicated US Patent 510,857 for a “Harp” issued on the same date to Ignaz Hammerl as an assignor for Alfred Dolge (applied for on 18 May 1893). The corresponding British document was issued as British Patent no. 1893:23912 on 10 February 1894.
It claimed hinged damping bars operated by levers. This can be seen as a variant of a device in German Patent no. 29930, issued on 20 May 1884 to Gütter and Hermann Lindemann. Gütter also carried it into the provisional specification of his British patent. The two had parted ways in the interim, at the outset of acrimonious contention over the extent of the protection afford by the 1884 German patent. (This is described in a journal article available here.)
Lindemann initiated a successful legal action in 1890 that awarded him broad rights to the manufacture and sale in Germany of any zither-like instrument that had an autoharp-type bar device. He then attempted to extend that coverage to similarly equipped “…musical stringed instruments such as guitars, mandolines, banjoes, and the like which are usually played by stopping the strings upon a finger board…”
He engaged Haddan’s firm to acquire a British patent for that design. I haven’t located a corresponding earlier German patent (for which an application may have been successfully contested and therefore not archived). However, a presumably identical Swiss Patent no. 8458 was issued to Lindemann on 30 March 1894, for an “Instrument with strings stretched over a neck, similarly to as on a guitar, for playing pieces of music without using a fingerboard.”
The detail labeled F over the soundhole is a tablature sheet set in a holder, co-opted from an earlier zither patent issued to Theodor Meinhold, who was one of Lindemann’s major adversaries in the German legal conflict. Taking a further cue from another of Meinhold’s patents, Lindemann illustrated a range of alternative bar designs that could be affixed to his fretless guitar. (Meinhold’s zither tablature is discussed here and Gregg Miner considers Lindemann’s patent in relation to harp guitars here.)
The point of interest for now is that Haddan’s firm did not treat Lindemann’s request as it did all the others considered in this post. The most obvious difference was in the document’s heading, where “Haddan’s Improvements…” as seen on the three British patents in this post’s banner image, was replaced by “Lindemann’s Improvements…” There was no mention of any communication from abroad in Lindemann’s application, either, who described the invention and made his claims in the first person.
Reginald Haddan played no apparent role beyond preparing and signing the application as Lindemann’s proxy. It was for “Improvements relating to Guitars and similar Stringed Instruments, and Indicators for Playing the same,” filed with a provisional specification on 1 March 1894. The complete specification was submitted on 29 November 1894, and accepted on 9 February 1895 as British Patent no. 1894:4388.
This action would therefore have been initiated while the one on behalf of Rudolf Dolge was still pending. If the ethical perspective of the day resembled the current one, it would be reasonable for the Haddan organization to have noted a conflict of interest when responding to Lindemann’s request for representation, compounded by its previous involvement in Gütter’s British patent. One guess would be that a discussion about this led to the scrubbing of any indication of Haddan participating in Lindemann’s application beyond its transmission. Another is that Lindemann insisted on being named personally in a manner that was counter to general practice and that the firm acquiesced.
The latter would explain the reversion to “Haddan’s Improvements…” when precessing yet another autoharp patent while Lindemann’s was still pending. On the basis of a communication from abroad by the “C. F. Zimmermann Company of Dolgeville,” Herbert Haddan applied for a British patent for “Improvements in or relating to Harps, Zithers, and similar Stringed Musical Instruments” on 5 June 1894. This was also the date on which US Patent 521,109 was issued to Dolge and Aldis John Gery for a “Harp” of identical specification.
It was the successor to Zimmermann’s large exhibition model autoharps and marketed in the US as a “Concert Grand Autoharp” (discussed further here). The corresponding British Patent No. 1894:10938 was issued on 28 July 1894. In the meanwhile, Dolge and Gery were issued Canadian Patent no. 46778 on 8 August 1894 for the same instrument, based on a typewritten transcription of the US application submitted on 18 June 1894.
There is a striking similarity between the way Haddan structured Lindemann’s British patent application and the processing of the one communicated by Gütter and Grob ten years earlier. British law permitted an application to be filed with a provisional specification, requiring the submission of a binding “complete” specification within the following nine months. The initial claims were legally protected during that interval. This was fully utilized with both the Lindemann and Gütter/Grob applications.
The complete specification of Gütter’s barred zither differed in virtually every mechanical detail from the provisional specification. In contrast, Lindemann’s barred guitar was fully specified in the Swiss patent issued on 30 March 1894. Nonetheless, that specification was truncated in the preliminary specification submitted with the British patent application on 1 March 1894. It was restored to full length in the complete specification submitted on the next to the last permissible business day, 29 November 1894.
It is not clear when the Swiss patent application was submitted. Estimating its processing to have taken a month would synchronize it with the British one, and indicate coordinated action in obtaining multinational coverage for the same invention. However, a question remains about why the British application was not submitted with a complete specification at the outset.
One plausible explanation could be that both Herbert and Reginald Haddan suggested that their clients consider taking advantage of the nine-month window as a competitive tactic. That approach worked well for Gütter (also detailed in the initially cited post). It would have been worth Lindemann adopting, too, if he were in no hurry to exploit the barred guitar commercially.
The range of alternative mechanisms in the patent drawings suggests that they were intended to illustrate the claimed innovations rather present a fully practicable implementation. If nothing else, it is difficult to envision a playing position that both comfortably situates the buttons on the bars, and orients the tablature sheets legibly.