Harmony and disharmony

4 November 202428 January 2026 stringbed1 Comment

A recent post on this blog discussed how the accordion and concertina maker, Carl Friedrich Zimmermann, made his way in 1864 from the German town of Carlsfeld to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He did so to take over the operation of a music store from his brother, Charles Moritz Zimmermann. The post that followed it examined Carl’s activity there during the ensuing decades. The present one wraps this series up by considering events surrounding his retirement.

The 1870 United States Census records a household two doors away from that store, headed by Carl Zimmermann with his wife Sophia and ten children. His occupation was “Imp[orter of] Musical Instruments.” The 16-year-old Charles and the one year younger Alexander, both “Work in a Music Store.”

The 1880 US Census records Carl Zimmermann as a “Dealer in Musical Ins[truments]” and Charles as a “Clerk in a Store.” The family now resided above their music store at 238 North Second Street, seen in the following photograph.

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Musical Instruments

Patent misrepresentation of patents

19 January 202214 May 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

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.

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Musical Instruments

Guitar-zithers and barless autoharps

22 December 202119 November 2025 stringbed2 Comments

On 20 April 1893, Fredrick Menzenhauer, filed a US patent application for a “Guitar-Zither,” issued as US520651 on 29 May 1894. Its illustrations come very close to the form of fretless zither commonly termed a “chord zither.” The only differences are the tuning device in the middle of the soundboard underneath the first melody string, and the separation between the bass string and the other strings in each of the chords (which are also recessed into the lower bridge).

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Musical Instruments

Eva Hammarlund’s Christmas Present 1893

8 December 202114 May 2025 stringbed2 Comments

The German musical instrument manufacturer, Theodor Meinhold (1846–1913), played a significant role in the popularization of the autoharp in Europe. One of his contributions was a form of sheet music that is positioned underneath the strings (adapting a scheme presented in a US patent issued shortly before his own German patent). It graphically maps the movement of the right hand from string to string when playing a melody and numerically indicates the chord bars to be held down by the left hand for accompaniment.

Meinhold obtained German Imperial Patent No. 63702 for it in October 1891, illustrating the device schematically to permit its use with “zithers of the most differing constructions.” It includes a mechanism “for sounding accompaniment chords [through which] the playing of certain melodies is extraordinarily eased.” This accompaniment device is seen under the word “Bass” in the following illustration and was co-opted from another US patent that presented a simplified alternative to the chord bars on an autoharp. (I’ll discuss the two earlier documents in a separate post.)

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