The gradual improvement upon Meyer's invention, during the
next quarter of a century, are first due to the Chickerings and then
the Steinways. The former overstrung an iron frame square, the latter
overstrung an iron frame grand, the culmination of this special make
since of general American and German adoption. It will be seen that, in
the American make, the number of tension bars has not been reduced, but
a diagonal support has, to a certain extent, been accepted and adopted.
The sound-board bridges are much further apart than obtains with the
English grand, or with the Anglo-French Erard. The advocates of the
American principle point out the advantages of a more open scale, and
more equal pressure on the sound-board. They likewise claim, as a gain,
a greater tension. I have no quite accurate information as to what
the sum of the tension may be of an American grand piano. One of
Broadwood's, twenty years ago, had a strain of sixteen and one-half
tons; the strain has somewhat increased since then. The remarkable
improvement in wiredrawing which has been made in Birmingham, Vienna,
and Nuremberg, of late years, has rendered these high tensions of far
easier attainment than they would have been earlier in the century.
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