Bow & Bridge Violin and bow makers, as the old books printed them

Books › Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864 › scan 102

Scan 102

Notice of Anthony Stradivari, the celebrated violin-maker, known by the name of Stradivarius:, 1864

8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 80. See the scan on archive.org.

1him to judge beforehand of the intonation of the wood which he used. This is proved by the fact that experiments of the same kind, made on various woods whose appearance was identical, and with rods of the same dimensions, have yielded extreme diversities of sound, such as a third, a fourth, and even more, when the rods were not taken from the same piece of wood.
3Let us now see what of positive instruction theory has deduced from the facts which have been mentioned, and why we may conclude with certainty that the admirable qualities of the instruments of Stradivarius have been obtained by virtue of the laws of this theory, and not by the effect of time and use, which can never bring forth perfection from a mediocre article.
5We know that the sound-board or belly, which supports the strings and the bridge, is made of deal, and the back of the instrument, of maple. Deal is preferable to every other kind of wood for the belly, by reason of its feeble density, and especially on account of its elasticity.* Its resistance to flexion is greater, not only than that of any other wood, but even than that of many metallic bodies. It is equal to that of glass, and even steel, over which it has the advantage of exceeding lightness. Sound is propagated with as great a rapidity in deal, as in the other substances which have been mentioned. This fact is demonstrated by the following experiment: if we take three rods of glass, steel, and deal cut in the direction of the fibres, all having the
7* We here reproduce a part of what we have said in our Rapport sur les instruments de musique de l'Exposition de 1855, concerning the theory of bow-instruments.

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