Temperament, A pianist responds

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Greetings, 
I wrote: 
>>>    ET was being advocated by a few radicals in the late 1700's, but they 
>really appear as abberations to the field at large.  Too many contemporary 
>writers were extolling the inequalities of temperament to think that they 
>wanted to get rid of them.  Jorgensen offers more than a few examples. 
>    I don't think ET was a goal of many people before 1900. >>

Don responds:
<<With respect ET was known and used in the 1400's by lute players. Please
don't blame this on research done 500 years later, or I will have to take a
ride with Dr. Who!<, 

  Geez! the Lute Lobby! (:)}}
    I was specifically addressing the tuning of keyboards.  Lutes' intonation 
was set by movable frets, which can be placed in ET by linear measurment.  M. 
Mersenne, in 1690 not only gave a mathematical  way to do this, but expressed 
doubt that ET could be tuned on strung keyboards because of the need to use 
the ear.  This, plus the well documented disjuncture between the lutes and 
viols versus "keyboard tuning" seems to indicate that it wasn't happening on 
the keyboards of the time.  That is all I was talking about. 
Regards, 
Ed