can refer to no pianoforte made by him. I should regard it as treasure
trove if one were forthcoming in the same way that brought to light the
authentic one of Stein's. As, however, Backers' intimate friends, and
his assistants in carrying out the invention, were John Broadwood and
Robert Stodart, we have, in their early instruments, the principle and
all the leading features of the Backers grand. The increased weight
of stringing was met by steel arches placed at intervals between the
wrest-plank and the belly-rail, but the belly-rail was still free from
the thrust of the wooden bracing, the direction of which was confined to
the sides of the case, as it had been in the harpsichord.

Stodart appears to have preceded Broadwood in taking up the manufacture
of the grand piano by four or five years. In 1777 he patented an
alternate pianoforte and harpsichord, the drawing of which patent shows
the Backers action. The pedals he employed were to shift the harpsichord
register and to bring on the octave stop. The present pedals were
introduced in English and grand pianos by 1785, and are attributed to
John Broadwood, who appears to have given his attention at once to the
improvement of Backers' instrument. Hitherto the grand piano had been
made with an undivided belly-bridge, the same as the harpsichord had
been; the bass strings in three unisons, to the lowest note, being of
brass. Theory would require that the notes of different octaves should
be multiples of each other and that the tension should be the same for
each string. The lowest bass strings, which at that time were the note
F, would thus require a vibrating length of about twelve feet. As only
half this length could be afforded, the difference had to be made up in
the weight of the strings and their tension, which led, in these early
grands, to many inequalities. The three octaves toward the treble could,
with care, be adjusted, the lengths being practically the ideal lengths.
It was in the bass octaves (pianos were then of five octaves) the