When coming across new information of substantive relevance to a post that is already online, I usually edit that material into it without separate announcement. If its topic is explored further in a later post, retrospective attention is called there to the revision, with summary details and a link to the modified text. The present post does a bit of both and then proceeds into new territory. I’m bundling these tasks here because they are particularly interrelated and to wrap up loose ends as the blogging year draws to a close.
The preparation of the preceding post entailed a general search for zither-related patents issued to the German musical instrument manufacturer Peter Renk. Those relevant to that post are detailed in it. An additional two patents necessitated significant changes to another post that had been available for a longer while. It is headed The Keyboard Autoharp and Gusli, and has been reworked to reflect the new documents.
The initial version traced a path between a US patent issued in 1888 for a variant form of the autoharp with a piano-type keyboard, and a further variant of that design which became a mainstay of the traditional Russian orchestra early in the 20th century. It is also widely encountered there in solo use and a variety of smaller ensembles. The cited post illustrates that breadth with several video demonstrations, adding another here.
That post also includes more information about the patent from 9 October 1888 (US390830). It was issued for a “Zither” to Ferdinand Wigand, a string instrument maker in Brooklyn, New York, who was an established member of the trade when the autoharp made its first attested appearance. He based his innovation on that instrument’s initial trapezoidal form.
The extent of the developmental continuity between it and the Russian design was unclear when the post was being written. This was subsequently clarified by a German patent issued to Renk that entered into effect on 12 November 1895 (DE87374). It precisely describes the readily detachable bar device that characterizes what might more specifically be termed the Russian keyboard autoharp (or gusli or zither).
Renk obtained a British patent for the same mechanism in the following year (GB189603814). A search for implementations in actual production there or in Germany led to another British patent. This one was issued to “Harry Mackwood Millington, trading as Witton, Witton, & Co…Pianoforte Manufacturers” and “John Sutherland Young…Mechanic” both located in London (GB189809698).
Its provisional text-only specification was filed on 27 April 1898 and describes a set of damping bars operated via a keyboard, on an instrument “somewhat similar to…a zither.” The complete specification is dated 20 January 1899. It presents the innovation explicitly as a type of autoharp and includes drawings.
This invention relates to a new or improved stringed musical instrument of the kind known as autoharps.
Renk’s 1895 patent describes a self-contained separable bar housing without illustrating anything to which it might be fastened. The post with the videos of Russian instruments includes a few demonstrating the removal and reattachment of this device. They also show the additionally characteristic extension of the stringbed toward the player’s right-hand side, with the bass strings on larger models scaled more comparably to a grand piano than to a spinet.
Witton, Witton, & Co began producing a keyboard autoharp named “The Gondolin” at some time during the decade following the issuance of Millington’s patent (more info here).
It clearly differs from the patent drawing in the reversal of the instrument’s handedness and the placement of the bar housing flush against the left side. The Russian design similarly reverses the direction of the strings on the unmechanized precursor instrument to which the keyboard was attached at its left end. This layout favors right-handed players wishing to use their dominant hand to pluck the strings and the other to operate the bars.
It emerged in both London and St. Petersburg within a span of about five years, reducing the likelihood of independent development. If the Gondolin provided the impetus, the notion of a primary Western European influence would be reinforced. Should the keyboard gusli have had precedence, it would mark a direct Eastern European participation in the mechanization of the type of zither under present consideration. In final reference to the named earlier post, this is also where the playing technique that I believe inspired damping bars originated.
The “Registered Design” labeled on the soundboard of the Gondolin is stamped elsewhere on the instrument as “R.D. 332413.” As was the purpose of this type of protection, it would have covered the instrument’s ornate profile rather than any mechanical detail. However, the indicated number was allocated in 1879 for printed fabrics.
A search for the correct record was unsuccessful but did lead to unanticipated information about the “American Autoharp Company,” incorporated in England on 17 April 1894. The lead partner was the “musical instrument manufacturer” William Eschemann, a US citizen working and residing in London. The second partner was Louis William Walker, also a “musical instrument manufacturer” and US citizen, but working and living in Philadelphia. The third was the “merchant” Paul Grubert, a British citizen residing in London. They had been doing business together as “musical instrument makers and sellers” for an unspecified period prior to the formal incorporation.
One of the photographs included by Becky Blackley in The Autoharp Book, is of a “special label” in an instrument otherwise marked with dates to July 1895. I am positing that it names the organization in London:
Man’f’d for the
American Autoharp Co.
by the
C. F. Zimmermann Co.
Dolgeville,
N. Y.
The facility in Dolgeville was the successor to C. F. Zimmermann’s original autoharp factory in Philadelphia. In apparent preparation for its sale to Alfred Dolge, Zimmermann applied for a US trademark for the word Autoharp, issued on 17 January 1893 (no. 22339). In the application he declared having “used it…in commerce between the United States and foreign nations…particularly with England.”
The possibility of his bridgehead there having been the unincorporated partnership of which Louis William Walker was a member, is bolstered by the details of Walker’s situation in Philadelphia. The 1893 edition of Boyd’s Philadelphia Directory lists him as a musical instrument maker living at 465 York Avenue. This was a five-minute walk from Zimmermann’s factory at 240 North Second Street. Two years earlier he was a cabinet maker living over an hour away.
If it can correctly be surmised from this that Walker worked for Zimmermann, he would either have been left unemployed or obligated to relocate, when Dolge acquired the autoharp facility and moved it to New York in 1893. Walker is not listed in any later Philadelphia directory that I could find. But he reappears with a London address in a corporate document of the American Autoharp Company dated 24 August 1894 — just four months after its founding — and in a similar document from 11 July 1895.
On 25 July 1895, Eschemann applied for a British patent for “Improvements relating to Auto-harps.” It was in his name only without any mention of the Company. He submitted its complete specification directly with the application but it was not approved until 25 July 1896 (GB1895014204).
He filed a substantively identical application for a US patent headed “Autoharp,” on 13 September 1895, again in his name only. Its examination also took an exceptionally long time and the patent wasn’t issued until 25 August 1896 (US566388). Both delays can plausibly have resulted from objections filed by competitors, not least in the US.
This might also explain why the English corporation changed its name from The American Autoharp Company to “The Autoharp Manufacturing Company,” at a meeting convened for that purpose on 20 December 1895. There is no list of attendees but the “special resolution” enacting the change is signed by Eschemann as the organization’s Secretary.
His 1895 patent applications state that “this invention relates to a class of musical instruments usually known as autoharps (or in Germany as accord-zithers).” Specific types vary in the mechanical attributes of the chord producing device. This one co-opts a movable bar housing patented by Paul Renk and Karl August Gütter in 1891 (discussed at length in the preceding post), which cascaded into a succession of what are termed “transposing autoharps.” The most recent such design was patented by William Bryant in US2010326255 and is demonstrated here.
Eschemann shifted the bar housing into three positions. He fitted it with 20 conventional damping bars and three rows of buttons. Their tops are marked with M, N, S, and D for major, minor, dominant seventh, and diminished seventh chords. Each bar produces three chords of the labeled type offset by semitones, depending on the position of the housing.
It will be seen that the total number of chords formed by the chord or damper bars in the three positions is sixty…but this is sufficient to produce all the keys…since some of the keys and chords are repeated in taking the whole series.
The actual chords are mapped on two equivalent tables above the buttons:
…arranged so that it may be readily understood by those familiar with ordinary musical notation or by those entirely unfamiliar with the theory of music.
The alternative to staff notation is the numerical system devised by Zimmermann, who crusaded for its widespread adoption. A schematic piano keyboard underneath the strings shifts along with the bar housing, adding a third frame of reference as well as guiding melodic transposition. Eschemann neither acknowledged the source of the numerical notation nor claimed to have developed it.