Scan 363
The American history and encyclopedia of music …, 1908
6 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. Printed page 315. See the scan on archive.org.
1in the world. The early perfection attained is more remarkable when we consider the skill, taste, and exquisite nicety which are positive requisites. Piano-making indeed is one of the pursuits which defy the labor-saving machine, and as the Scientific American observed not long ago, "the making of high-grade pianos is a field where the skilled artisan reigns supreme, and is likely to remain so to the end of time."
3America shares with Germany the distinction of being most largely engaged in the piano-making business. Statistical reports of the year 1905 recorded two hundred and forty-nine piano manufactories in the United States, and an invested capital of $49,649,135. New York State leads with $15,504,312. New York City is the principal center in the United States for the manufacture of pianos, 82,532 uprights and nearly all the grands for the entire State being manufactured in that city in the representative year 1905. The State of New York reported the manufacture of 96,985 uprights, or more than one-third of the entire number reported for the United States. Illinois is a close second to New York with a capital amounting to $14,908,172, and Massachusetts follows next with $5,749,266. The annual output is over 250,000 per year, or as Edward Everett Hale estimated in his speech at the eightieth anniversary celebration of the founding of the house of Chickering, something like one new piano to every thirty-five houses in the country. The important patents taken out for the improvement of the piano from 1796 to 1896 do not fall far short of five hundred. The piano now is the most extensively used of all musical instruments, and its widespread use has very nearly killed the trade in cabinet and reed organs.
5The rise and growth of the piano industry in the new world is an interesting chronicle. The history of the American piano (that is, of its direct antecedents) dates, as far as our knowledge goes, from the year 1743, for it was then that Gustavus Hesselius manufactured spinets in Philadelphia. In 1759 it was recorded that a man named Tre-
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