WHAT! ........NO English!

[Dick Glasgow]

Browsing through 'The Complete Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments' I naturally first turned to page 176 to see what they had to say about the Concertina, but was rather disappointed to see a photo of not one but TWO Anglo Concertinas .......... but no English Concertina.

Then I read the text:

In 1829-30, Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875), an English inventor, built a chromatic hand harmonica and called it a "Concertina". Many improvements followed. Many variations on his invention were built but the standard concertina has 128 notes, 36 buttons, and 28 bass buttons. Each button produces two notes. The box is sometimes hexagonal in section, sometimes square. Chords are produced by depressing more than one button at the same time, giving the instrument special harmonic capabilities. It can also be played in polyphony as a result of individual notes being played on the bass side. Nowadays the concertina, known as the "squeeze-box" in slang, is usually employed as an accompaniment to folk music.

Thoughts?

[ishtar]

You mean that's a real book, so we can't even blame Wikipedia?

Man, that's just shocking, so it is. Sometimes there's a case for burning books. ;D

[guran]

Agree - it is terrible but it is in good ( =bad) company. Many years ago I looked through all encyclopedias in various languages I could find and the information on concertinas was more or less (mostly entirely) wrong everywhere. Some of the constant faults are

1. "Charles Wheatstone patented the concertina in 1829, or he did it in 1844".

BOTH statements entirely wrong. The "concertina" ( as an instrument) has never been patented by anyone. CW did "patent" some inventions in 1829 and 1844 that is correct.

2. CW "called it concertina"

That is not known. It is not known from where/who the term concertina comes. Not unlikey from someone in the Wheatstone environment but might be from elsewhere but that is all.

3. CW "invented the concertina"

A meaningless expression since there are as we know many kinds of "concertinas" and there is no accepted definition what a *concertina* IS and furthermore CW has not claimed himself that he invented the device we usually mean by that designation.

End of confusion for the time being. Next please...

[Dick Glasgow]

Interesting.

I must admit, I never really thought about the patent side of things.
I just assumed that the German Anglo had been patented by it's German creator, back in the 1820s & that CW had automatically patented each of his prototypes, until reaching the finished article.

Thanks for the food for thought.

Cheers
Dick