English and Viennese Actions

[John Delacour]

At 5:25 pm +0000 12/6/07, Anne Acker wrote:

>With one exception:  I find that the better makes, properly set up, 
>and played by the sensitive player, have equally fast repetition. 
>Proving this will be part of an ongoing research project.

There is no doubt about it.  The English action with the addition of 
the Cary spring has many points of superiority over the French action 
including far faster and more reliable repetition.  By far the 
greatest development of the English action was carried out by John 
Brinsmead and I am in the process of producing exact drawings and 
movies of the Brinsmead grand action.  There is a single weakness in 
the English action and that is the impossibility of avoiding wear at 
the cushion, which can be quite rapid under heavy professional use 
and has the effect, as it would more slowly on an upright, of 
gradually increasing the touch weight and eventually making the piano 
unplayable unless the cushions are at first shimmed out and 
ultimately replaced.  I have invented a modification that completely 
removes this weakness and this, and other interesting modifications, 
have enabled me to produce an action that is virtually free of 
friction.  I have a working one-key model of this action here with me.

Delighted at having solved this age-old problem, I spent a day a 
couple of years ago at the Patent Office in the British Library 
ordering up from the vaults huge tomes of old patents from Robert 
Stodart's original patent for the Backers action onwards.  In the 
process I discovered a sketch in one of Brinsmead's patents that 
shows that he had considered something along the lines of my 
invention and added the sketch to the patent to cover himself without 
actually having developed it, since the drawing shows an arrangement 
that could not actually have worked and was never produced. 
Nevertheless I was rather pleased to discover that JB had touched on 
the solution.  He must have forgotten about it or he would certainly 
eventually have arrived at the same modification as I have and 
incorporated it into all his grand actions.

While actions were light and not required to repeat perfectly, the 
English action was durable and excellent.  As increased tensions made 
necessary heavier hammers, repetition became a problem that could 
only be solved with the addition of some sort of spring, and while 
the Cary spring is the best sort of spring it brings with it the 
penalty of increased pressure and wear on the cushion that less good 
"pusher" springs do not.

You are welcome to contact me off-list if you need any input into 
your research, since it is a subject I have researched quite deeply 
for quite a while.

JD