Books › A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891 › scan 203
Scan 203
A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891
10 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 183. See the scan on archive.org.
1gradually into use. The scale of instruments with two valves had necessarily certain gaps, and in order to render it truly chromatic, a third valve was added at a subsequent date. The bore of all these early valves was exceedingly small, averaging only some .38 inch, the bottoms of the pumps* being utilised as wind-ways, thus causing many abrupt turns in the air column.
3The various endeavours to improve upon these valves led to many different contrivances. One of the earliest of these was patented in 1824 by John Shaw, a farmer, residing at Glossop, Derbyshire, and called by him "transverse spring slides." Shaw's slides, or staples, were made either ascending or descending, and consisted of U-shaped pieces of tubing placed at right angles to the main tube of the instrument, and fitted with touch-pieces, by the depression of which the moveable tubing became either cut off from (if ascending), or added (if descending) to, the main wind-way of the instrument. This system of Shaw's was afterwards improved upon by the German maker Schott, and for a time was generally used in Germany and Austria; and, for the larger instruments, possessed the advantage of presenting a wind-way less constricted and of greater diameter than was possible with the Stölzel valves; and valves of somewhat similar construction, though much improved, are still employed for instruments used in the Belgian Army.
5Until about 1846 the bottoms of valves were still utilised as wind-ways, to the detriment of the tone, and in the early three-valved cornets, or cornopæans, as they were called in England, the air-passage entered usually at the side of the first valve, and, passing through the pumps, left by the bottom of the third. About this time a larger bore came into general use, and has since been adopted generally; and a further improvement was made by which there were fewer angles in the wind-ways of the valves, the air-passages being built up within the pumps.
7The well-known Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax, a son of the Charles Sax already mentioned, commencing business on his own account in Paris in 1842, applied himself particularly to improvements in brass instruments, and produced a valve of somewhat greater
9* The pistons are technically termed pumps.
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