Item Type: Wheatstone Patent
Summary
Full Description: Charles Wheatstone's Patent no 5803. A photocopy of
Wheatstone Patent No 5803, dated December 1829. "Wind Musical
Instruments" - mainly The Symphonium. Here is an excerpt from the
paper upon "The Invention and Evolution of the English Concertina" in
the Galpin Society Journal Vol 61, May 2009.
The progression to Wheatstone's symphonium - and beyond
By 1825, the 23-year-old Charles Wheatstone had accumulated some
experience in the design, manufacture and promotion of 'new' musical devices.
He had worked for his uncle Charles' music selling business at 436
Strand; had set up automata in the family's Gloucester shop; had devised the
keyed Flute Harmonique; had demonstrated the "Enchanted Lyre";
had demonstrated the "Diaphonicon"; and had showed "The Apparatus of
the Invisible Girl" - for which no written details survive! He was clearly an
idiosyncratic inventor, with a marked bent towards matters acoustic, even at
this young age. (Bowers, Sir Charles Wheatstone, pp6-11))
In 1826, the musical business of Charles and his brother
William was amalgamated with that of their father William, who
was trading at 436, Strand, London,
their Trade card) and from 1829 traded at 20 Conduit Street, which also became Charles' home until his marriage in 1847. Their business activities included the marketing of imported Demian accordions, music publishing, a 'musical library', and the manufacturing of their own Wheatstone Æolinas
By 1829, he had completed work on his patent for the
Symphonium
, and therein acknowledges the influence on his invention of the
"instrument known in China by the name of tsching or ching... one of the
pipes having at its end... inserted into the wind chest a tongue or spring
[reed] resembling that of the Æolina.." An ancient sheng,
closely similar to that illustrated in the 1829 patent, was recovered from the
remains of the Wheatstone Museum in 1963, and is now in the
Concertina Museum Collection.
The Wheatstone Laboratory Sheng is in the Collection in Section C18
.
In addition to the free-reeded tsching or sheng, Charles
Wheatstone was familiar with the German Mund-harmonicas and the
Bouveret and Cordier reeded flutes. However, his logical mind was
dismissive of the method of clumsy tonguing needed to play the various
Æolinas and Mund-harmonicas, and of the limited facility
for melodic playing permitted by the first Demian accordion. It is not
known if he was aware of the Psallmelodikon, (though he had the
Bouveret and Cordier keyed free-reeded flutes in his collection) but in
the patent claims that describe his own free reeded instrument the
symphonium, he dismissed the somewhat random array of reeds and
'keys' used within other keyed free-reeded "flute-like"
instruments, and made pertinent claims for the improved disposition of the
reeds or 'springs' of his proposed new instrument, and for the compact and
eminently-playable arrangement of its buttons or 'keys' which control the air
supply to each reed. In his patent specification No 5803, he provided the
following claims:
On existing free reeded instruments: "Several of these
[reeds] being placed in apertures arranged parallel to each other side by
side in a plate, and tuned to the notes of a common chord, constitute one of
the simplest forms of a wind musical instrument, known in Germany under the
name of the Mund-harmonica, and in England by that of the Æolina.
Finger keys have also been added to such instruments, somewhat similar to
those of flutes, but always placed at such distances apart as to allow space
for the fingers to apply themselves to each key when the instruments are held
in... the manner of fingering the flute or flageolet"
On his principal patent claims for the new instrument: "...I
do claim the employment of two parallel rows of finger studs on each end or
side of the instruments fitted with keys to terminate the ends of the levers
of the keys, and the so placing them with respect to their distances and
positions as that they may, singly, be progressively and alternately touched
or pressed down by the first and second fingers of each hand, without the
fingers interfering with the adjacent studs, and yet be placed so near
together as that any two adjacent studs may be simultaneously pressed down,
when required, by the same finger.... In the ordinary keyed wind instruments,
fingering is effected by the motion sideways of the hands and fingers... In
this new arrangement, that mode of fingering is rendered entirely
inapplicable and a motion not hitherto employed is rendered available, namely,
the ascending and descending motions of the fingers... This mode of arranging
the studs enables me to bring the keys much nearer together.”
On the addition of extra rows of accidental notes or semitones to the
two-row layout, to create the four-row 24- and 32-key Symphoniums, with the
so-called "English" fingering system, used on subsequent Wheatstone
concertinas: "I
likewise claim the introduction of two additional rows of finger studs on
each end or side of the instruments, parallel to those of the preceding
arrangement for the purpose of introducing semitones, when
required..."
A group of illustrations in this Galpin Journal paper show the reed
plates of the Wheatstone Double Æolina, those of the
ex-Wheatstone Museum 5-key Demian accordion, those of the early
17-key Wheatstone symphonium, and those of the 'standard' 24-Key
symphonium serial no 171; when all shown side by side, this clearly
indicates how these multi-tongued reed plates show a direct lineage, from the
Æolina, via those in the Demian accordion, to the
symphonium's reeds, housed in their compact and logical enclosure and
each reed simply and individually operable by the fingertips for both single
note and chord performance.
An early symphonium in the Chambers Collection, numbered 18, has 15
keys, with the two accidental note keys being contemporary additions to the
original 13-key layout. The Patent itself shows drawings of 16-key and
32-key variants, and a
24-key symphonium
, numbered 171 is of the later, more common, and possibly 'standard' design.
Its key layout was used in the next stage of Wheatstone's research on
free reed instruments - the development of the concertina."
There is a Portfolio of Historic Concertina Patents at
www.concertina.com/patents/
There are nine historic concertina patents, including all the early
Wheatstone English system patents, Maccann's Duet
patent, Jones's Anglo patent, the Crane Duet patent, and
Kaspar Wicki's patent.
Source Catalogue No: The Concertina Museum: 1.2.10-001
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