What to patent

[Richard Moody]

----------
> From: Susan Kline <skline@proaxis.com>
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Re: What to patent
> Date: Saturday, December 04, 1999 1:29 PM
> 
> At 11:21 AM 12/04/1999 -0200, Clark wrote:
> 
> >Violin family soundposts tie the back and plate resonances together;
this
> >has been tried by a number of 19th c. piano makers in a variety of
> >arrangements mostly with double sb's.
> 
> This is interesting! Can you give more details, such as makers,
approximate
> dates, and what they tried? Which ones had the double soundboards? How
far
> apart were they? How many posts were used, and where were they placed?
> 
> Most importantly, did they work in improving the tone? That is, were
they
> discontinued because they were too expensive to produce, or because they
> didn't give the desired results?
> 
> Do you know of any written materials such as books or articles about
> these pianos?
> 
> Susan

Dolge  in _Pianos and Their Makers_ makes mention of various ideas and
notions concerning soundboard construction, but not in detail.  
	 "Attempts to increase the volume of tone by using double sound boards
connected by wooden posts or otherwise, the imitation of the violin or
cello form, carefully worked out corrugated soundboards, etc., have all
been in vain and are discarded for good." 

He talks about his "engagement with the Mathusheck factory in 1867-69,
{where} exhaustive experiments were made to find the most responsive
thickness for a soundboard."  and describes the most satisfactory being
the "regulation soundboard, three eights of an inch thick in the treble,
tapering off to one fourth of an inch in the bass...."  He makes mention
of Mathusheck's "eqilibre" system (pat. 1879) apparently to maintian
bearing but says only that the results did not justify the costs. I doubt
if it involved springs, but who knows?   "Corrugated soundboards" ??   I
have seen or two or three but they weren't carefully worked out. ---ric