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THE HISTORY OF THE PIANOFORTE.

[Footnote: A paper recently read before the Society of Arts, London.]

By A. J. HIPKINS.


As this paper is composed from a technical point of view, some
elucidation of facts, forming the basis of it, is desirable before we
proceed to the chronological statement of the subject. These facts are
the strings, and their strain or tension; the sound-board, which is the
resonance factor; and the bridge, connecting it with the strings. The
strings, sound-board, and bridge are indispensable, and common to
all stringed instruments. The special fact appertaining to keyboard
instruments is the mechanical action interposed between the player and
the instrument itself. The strings, owing to the slender surface they
present to the air, are, however powerfully excited, scarcely audible.
To make them sufficiently audible, their pulsations have to be
communicated to a wider elastic surface, the sound-board, which, by
accumulated energy and broader contact with the air, re-enforces the
strings' feeble sound. The properties of a string set in periodic
vibration are the best known of the phenomena appertaining to acoustics.
The molecules composing the string are disturbed in the string's
vibrating length by the means used to excite the sound, and run off into
sections, the comparative length and number of which depend partly upon