A lot of material about Charles F. Zimmermann has appeared on this blog. The present post revisits familiar documents but addresses details in them that have not received much attention here or elsewhere. In introductory review, Zimmermann coined the term “autoharp” in an application for a US patent headed “Harp,” filed on 10 December 1881, and issued as US257808 on 9 May 1882.
In it he claims to “have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Harps.” The ensuing description provides information not just about the instrument’s structural details, but also the intended playing technique. Zimmermann explains all aspects of his invention by reference to a (pedal) harp, except for its size and shape which are compared to a “common zither.”
The patent makes four specific claims, all relating to damping bars “arranged transversely across the strings thereof, and provided with depending teeth or fingers designed and adapted to come in contact with and silence or ‘cut out’ certain strings.” They serve two musical functions. In one, “the different trigger-bars render those strings silent which do not belong to the responsive chord.” The number of such bars can vary but the second function is served by a single bar, “placed transversely across the middle of the strings of the harp…so adjusted that when moved its triggers touch them lightly at such point, thereby producing the falsetto or flageolet tone.”
The patent drawings show how each bar moves axially against a single spring, and one of its claims is for bars “resting at one end against springs.” However, the description notes that:
Each of these trigger-bars may render it possible to select two, or even three and four, chords by working such bar one way or the other, it resting between two springs, one at each end, which keep the fingers or teeth of the bar between the strings when not in use. Each bar [as illustrated] acts laterally against a spring placed at one of its ends. The flageolet bar moves in one direction and the bars configured to produce chords all move opposite to it.
The flageolet bar is shown in Fig. 2 and a specimen chord bar in Fig. 4. The extension of the latter functionality by the addition of a second spring at the other end of the bar is neither illustrated nor claimed, and the description of its effect is flawed.
The Fig. 4 bar produces a C major chord when engaged and the single spring, labeled c′, brings it to rest free of all strings. Disregarding the asymmetrical shape of the fingers, placing a second spring at the opposite end of the bar would permit the fingers to be moved toward the strings in either direction and produce two alternate chords. The second would be a G7, with no need for a bar of its own. The same shift of a bar configured for a minor chord would remove the third and flatten the seventh, giving only an incomplete dominant seventh in the key to which it belongs.
Extending this to “three and even four chords” requires an ancillary mechanism not described in the patent. Zimmermann surely had something in mind when mentioning this but apparently had not yet developed it in sufficient detail to claim it. The remaining technical hurdles differed for chromatic autoharps, where the adjacent strings are all separated by a semitone, and diatonic instruments which also have wholetone gaps. The patent description allows for varying configurations:
The instrument may have a diatonic scale of fifteen strings or a chromatic scale of thirty or more strings, and accordingly two to seven or more trigger-bars.
The patent drawing demonstrates further latitude by showing a 20-string diatonic autoharp. The bars are numbered sequentially, marked on the ends protruding through the support on the long side of the instrument. The strings are also numbered from 1–7 recursively in each octave, rather than named, and marked on the tops of the bars. All of these numbers are intended to be visible when the instrument is in use, requiring it to be placed flat on a table with the long side toward the player.
Zimmermann fitted both diatonic and chromatic autoharps with bars that could produce more than one chord, before calling public attention to his new instrument. Surviving exemplars show varying solutions to given aspects of the mechanical problem but the order in which he devised them is uncertain. The chromatic variant has an earlier attestable date but the technical detail of the diatonic one appears to have been preliminary to it.
Both share a core design feature that remains characteristic of the autoharp. Every bar is supported by two springs, one at each end. They are positioned underneath and at right angles to the bar, which moves toward the strings rather than parallel to them. The bars are operated by buttons near their midpoints and the damping pads are flat strips of felt.
Zimmermann advertised an autoharp with this revised bar design on 15 May 1885, and placed his patent number on the decorative grille holding them in place. The drawing in the ad is shown here overlaid (via the moveable control marked with arrows) on a photograph of an unsigned instrument in the collections of the Musikinstrumenten-Museum Markneukirchen, Germany (inv. no. 4491), kindly provided by Mario Weller at the museum.
The drawing is of a 27-string semi-diatonic instrument with nine parallel chord bars and no flageolet bar. The bars are labeled according to Zimmermann’s system of numerical notation. A printed strip glued across the soundboard identifies each string according to its position in that system, along with its conventional note name and the corresponding staff notation.
The photo shows a 30-string model with nine bars including a flageolet. The chord bars are again marked with Zimmermann’s numbers. Four of them are fitted with a device that raises and lowers auxiliary damping pads – fingers – enabling those bars to produce two chords each. The first of the three bars in the following illustration is the flageolet, the second is a basic chord bar, and the third has a full-length slider along its top that raises and lowers the articulated pads.
The reverse side of another of the bars fitted with a slider is seen in the next photo. A torsion spring at the upper end returns the slider to its initial position when the bar is released.
The close fit of the decorative grille around the buttons in the drawing appears to preclude such shifting, and would eliminate the need for any such mechanism. Mounting clips for a grille are seen in the photo but the grille itself is missing. It can safely be assumed that the only material difference between it and the one in the drawing is allowance for the movement of the buttons on the sliders.
Zimmermann exhibited a far more elaborate chromatic instrument of the same basic appointment at “The World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition” which took place in New Orleans from 16 December 1884 to 31 May 1885. Several such instruments survive. Here is a photo of an exemplar in the Rick Meyers Collection of Fretless Zithers.
This extends the functionality of the diatonic model. Each chord bar can be set axially into one of three positions. The slider that shifts individual damping pads has been replaced by a separate mechanism on the side of the bar. It is operated on those that have it by small levers, seen here protruding from the fourth, sixth, and eighth holes along the bottom edge of the central part of the grille.
These modifications permit the production of all major and minor chords, as well as all dominant, minor, and diminished sevenths. The flageolet bar is still present (with an unlabeled button) but no longer in the middle of the bar housing. This angles the aggregate device to an extent that only permits the strings to be plucked on its right-hand side. Zimmermann referred to these trapezoidal designs as “large” autoharps, after adding the now familiar “miniature” instruments to his production.
He sold his operation to Rudolf Dolge at the end of 1892, who then incorporated the “C. F. Zimmermann Company of Dolgeville, New York.” The new organization exhibited a wide range of autoharps, including the large chromatic instrument, at the World’s Columbian Exposition (aka Chicago World’s Fair), which opened on 5 May 1893. On 28 December of the same year, the company submitted a US patent application headed “Harp,” described as “relating to harps or zithers” and making no mention of the autoharp. It was issued as US521109 on 5 June 1894 (and shortly thereafter in identical British and Canadian patents), with the following drawing.
This design branched in two directions. One replaced the fretted tuning string at the instrument’s long side with the four-string fretboard of a concert zither (detailed in an earlier post). The other removed that device entirely, along with the grille. The next video explains that variant.
I see a strong resemblance between the dynamic shifting of the damping pads here and the direct use of the fingertips as dampers that is a fundamental technique on many Baltic psalteries (so-called by convention; they are classified as zithers). It is demonstrated on a Russian variant in this video performance (and as practiced elsewhere in the Baltic region on instruments of both older and newer designs in another earlier post).
Two basic techniques are used. In “closed” playing the left hand blocks out the chords while the right hand plucks the strings. The “open” technique employs both hands for plucking the strings, with a fluid boundary between the two approaches. Zimmermann also had good opportunity for observing Russian variants of the Baltic psaltery being demonstrated at the International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, held in Philadelphia in 1876 (discussed in yet another preceding post).
It may or may not be correctly surmised that he had these techniques in mind when designing the chord bars on his autoharp. Either way, it is easy to envision the hand operating the bars shifting to the adjacent open “strings, so that, if desired, the latter may be manipulated in the usual or customary manner” (again quoting from his 1882 patent). A corresponding emulation of the closed chording technique can easily be read into the statement that “each of these trigger-bars may render it possible to select two, or even three and four, chords by working such bar one way or the other.”
POSTSCRIPT
This post examines several source documents that have been discussed in greater detail but from differing perspectives in earlier posts. There are inline links to ones that are particularly relevant. I’m adding another to them in this postscript in order to comment on it more extensively.
Although I hadn’t foreseen its extension when drafting a post titled The Two Gentlemen of Vogtland nearly two years ago, it includes illustrations that directly supplement several of the ones seen above. Readers who regard the present text as of interest are likely to find the earlier one to be additionally worthwhile. I also recommend it to anyone who is wondering why I perpetually fail to recognize that Zimmermann – as is often held – did little more than plagiarize a pre-existing German zither that had chord bars, call it an “autoharp,” and obtain a US patent for it.
He is one of the two gentlemen referred to in the earlier post’s title. The other is Karl August Gütter, who is widely seen as the person Zimmermann most likely copy-catted. The post places their respective contributions to the mechanization of zithers in chronological order. Summarizing briefly for the click-averse, Gütter applied for his first relevant patent in Germany in May 1884. It described an instrument differing significantly in form and mechanical detail from the one in Zimmermann’s US patent application from December 1881.
They can plausibly have been independent inventions, but if one was influenced by the other, the priority is obviously set by the order of their appearance. I’ve looked deeply into 19th-century German documentation for evidence of any earlier design on which either of them might have based their work but found nothing. Competitive jockeying between the two did indeed arise, but its first specific indication wasn’t until the outset of 1885. It was marked by the emergence of the now familiar external profile of the autoharp.
The path leading to it is reviewed step by step in the earlier post. Determining which of them deserves credit for that profile comes down to a coin toss. There is no corresponding uncertainty about Zimmermann having priority for every detail of the bar device that both he and Gütter affixed to it.