Books › Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937 › scan 139
Scan 139
Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937
14 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 117. See the scan on archive.org.
1cert program was given by Mr. von Dohnanyi and Messrs. Maier and Pattison.
3The Chickering Brothers died one after another, Thomas E. on February 14, 1871; Charles Francis on March 23, 1891; and George H. on November 17, 1893. The men who had been associated with Jonas Chickering and later with George Chickering continued the business until 1908, when Chickering & Sons became one of the subsidiaries of the American Piano Company, a large holding company, along with William Knabe and Company, and Foster Armstrong Company. It retained its own organization, officers and name. The manufacturing was moved out to Rochester, New York, about 1929. Haines Brothers, Marshall and Wendell and other companies have also become part of this larger organization. This had an output of eighteen thousand pianofortes a year in 1909, making it one of the largest industries of its kind in the world. August 1, 1932 the Aeolian American Corporation was formed by merging certain assets of the Aeolian Company with those of the American Piano Company and all the manufacturing was concentrated in separate plants in Rochester.
5The present Boston offices and warerooms of the company are located in the Ampico Hall Building at [address hidden]
7Inventions
9Mechanical improvements and inventions constitute the real reason why the Chickering pianoforte attained its world-wide eminence. "The two most prominent features in the recent wonderful development of the piano manufacture in America are the invention and gradual perfection of the iron frame and the introduction of the overstrung scale."[address hidden] had been the first to introduce the iron plate into the pianoforte, patenting it in 1825, but his plate extended across only one-half of the instrument.9 Jonas Chickering made the first grand pianoforte with a full iron frame cast with the parallel bars in one piece. This invention,8 patented in 183710 and applied to the construction of his first grand pianoforte in 1840, was one of the epoch-making inventions which helped to revolutionize the pianoforte manufacturing industry.
118 American Cyclopaedia. Vol. XIII p. 492.
129 Parker, Richard C. A Tribune to the Life and Character of Jonas Chickering. Footnote p. 45.
1310 This date is given by the company's Historian, Miss Margaret Connell. Daniel Spillane in his History of the American Pianoforte p. 92 stated that Chickering's square metal plate together with an improved damper arrangement was patented October 8, 1840.
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