Piano wire

“ They are cut from steel stock 3/32 inch thick, with 1/4-inch holes for the socket bolts and 3/16 inch, or other convenient size, for the rivets that fasten on the turnbuckles.
The relative merits of cable and piano wire for trussing have not been thoroughly threshed out. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Most of the well-known builders use cable; yet if the difference between 1,000 feet of cable at 2 1/4 cents per foot (the price for 500-foot spools) , and 8 pounds of piano wire at 70 cents a pound, looks considerable to the amateur builder, let him by all means use the wire. ”

“ If the piano-wire only gives the same sound when struck either hard or soft, it is because it is manufactured to do one particular kind of work, and it can do no other.
Now we may pass from a piano-wire to a tuning-fork. We find that, by using different quantities or different shapes of metal, these instruments give out different notes. If all be of the same metal, the different quantities of metal will give us a difference in the pitch. This demonstrates that the pitch of a note is independent of any particular quality of the substance set into vibration. ”

“ And—"
"Stand back and give the professor room," interrupted Dunk, with mock solemnity.
"These wires look awful slim to me," said Jerry, when the general laugh subsided. "You don't go much on 'em, do you?"
"You bet, lots depends on them," answered Mr. Hawke, who was stringing light wires through miniature pulleys on the upper and lower wings. "They may look frail but in the full-sized machine they are the strongest piano wire."
"What do they do?"
"They really take most of the tension, and these struts take what is called the compression stresses. ”

“ Not only are wires ordered to size but many times also of certain temper or grades of hardness and stiffness. These various tempers are determined largely by the chemical analysis of the steel and the number of drafts after the last annealing.
Piano wire is well known to have a very high strength, sometimes as high as 400,000 pounds per square inch. Spring wire is rolled and drawn from higher carbon steel than is ordinary wire, and, through heat treatment, the best properties are imparted to it. ”

“ The kites are invariably flown on a steel wire line, for the hindrance to obtaining great heights is not due so much to the weight of the line as to the wind pressure upon it, and thus it becomes of great importance to use a material that possesses the greatest possible strength, combined with the smallest possible size. Steel piano wire meets this requirement, for a wire of 1⁄32 in. ”

“ But that was a silk string, Mr. Levin. I should think this piano wire would be much worse."
"Why?" asked the Forecaster. "On the contrary, it would act as a lightning-rod. Your kite reel is of metal and fastened to the ground. Wire [Pg 314] is a much better conductor of electricity than the body, so that there's less likelihood of your being struck."
"Is it the difference between a good conductor and a bad one that makes people put up lightning-rods?" asked Fred.
"Certainly. All that a lightning-rod does is to convey to the ground the electricity that is about to strike a building. ”

“ Experiments and observations show that wires are of practically no12 benefit, and sounding boards can be used only in special cases. Wires stretched in a room scarcely affect the sound, since they present too small a surface to disturb the waves. They have much the same effect on sound waves that a fish line in the water has on water waves. The idea has, perhaps, grown into prominence because of the action of a piano in responding to the notes of a singer. The piano has every advantage over a wire in an auditorium. ”

“ The cause may be a twisted string, a fault in the string by imperfect drawing of the wire, or in the construction of the sound-board.
In the low bass tones, a kind of false waves are always present, and will annoy the tuner long after he has been in regular practice. They are, however, of a different nature from the true waves in that they are of a metallic timbre and of much greater rapidity than the latter. Close attention will generally enable the tuner to distinguish between them. They are caused by what is known as "harmonics" or "over-tones" ”

“ To get a rich tone we must keep as many useful harmonics as possible, and therefore a piano hammer is so placed as to strike the string at a point which does not interfere with the best harmonics, but kills those which are objectionable. Pianoforte makers have discovered by experiment that the most pleasing tone is excited when the point against which the hammer strikes is one-seventh to one-ninth of the length of the wire from one end. ”

“ As in the upright, the behavior of the jack depends entirely upon the surrounding members. A very common occurrence in the square piano is a broken jack-spring. This spring is concealed in a groove on the under side of the bottom, with a linen thread leading around the end of the jack and held fast by a wooden plug. If the spring is found to be long enough, drive out the plug, attach a new thread to the spring, and fasten as before. If a new spring is needed, one may be made by wrapping some small wire round a piece of music wire of the right size. ”

“ The other wire from the battery was attached to the steel strings of a piano, P. When the coil c was brought over a string and the hook h was allowed to pass beneath the string and touch it very gently, the primary circuit was closed through the string, which served as an interrupter of the current and vibrated according to its tone. The secondary coil, not represented in the figure, was connected to a distant telephone receiver, which reproduced the tones of the piano strings.
Fig. 164
Producing a tone is merely a matter of making something vibrate with the required frequency. ”

“ The dampers in the square action depend entirely upon their weight for their efficiency in damping the strings and returning after being raised by the key. Often, after the key is struck, the damper will not return to its place and the string is undamped. This is generally found to be caused by the wire sticking in the hole through which it passes, the wire being rusty or bent or some foreign substance being in the hole round the wire. ”

“ After many unsuccessful trials, Sarraccus found a material that, in the form of a fine wire, twenty or thirty feet in length, vibrated in response to light of a certain color, as a wire in a piano or harp will often be attuned sympathetically to a certain note in the human voice, and will vibrate whenever that note is reached. The vibrations of this wire in response to light, however, were almost imperceptible, and it was only upon testing with a highly sensitive instrument that they were discovered. ”

“ In an address by Thomas Morris, before the Staffordshire, England, iron and steel works managers on the remarkable achievements that have been reached in the manufacture of fine wire, the interesting fact was mentioned that the lecturer had been presented by Warrington, the wire manufacturer, with specimens for which some $4.32 per pound were paid, or more than $8,600 per ton—drawn wire, largely used in the construction of piano and other musical and mechanical instruments. ”

“ We have now to look to something slightly resembling the principle of the violin or of the organ, in order to secure the additional sostenuto effect for which we are searching. Having to deal with a piano in practically its existing form, we obviously require to take special account of the fact that the note is begun by percussion, and that any attempt to bring a solid substance into contact with the wire while still vibrating, with the object of continuing its motion, is likely to produce more or less of a jarring effect. ”

“ The manner in which a vibratory body responds to impulses of its own periodicity may be easily shown by exposing the wires of a piano and raising the dampers, when, if a note be sung near the instrument, it will be found that a number of the wires respond, namely, those that are capable of vibrating synchronously with the constituent vibrations of the voice, for neither a voice nor a sounding wire gives forth one simple system of vibrations, the audible effect being due to the superposition or composition of several diverse elementary systems. ”

“ The peculiar temper of the wire has a great influence on the piano's keeping in tune, strings breaking, &c., and, as the quality cannot always be ascertained but by actual experiment, much is condemned after trial, and the perfect only used.
KEY-MAKERS' DEPARTMENT.
The preparation of what is termed the "keyboard" is one of peculiar nicety, and the selection of the lumber and its preparation require great experience and minute attention, so that the keys will not spring or warp, and thus either not work or throw the hammers out of place, &c. ”

“ William Pole, who regards cast steel music-wire as the strongest elastic material that exists. The earliest covered piano strings, about a hundred years ago, spun in long interstices of brass over steel, have in time become close spun in single, double, and even treble overlayings of copper, or mixed metal composed of spelter and copper, gaining in the largest strings a diameter of 0.21 of an inch, and considerable power of strain. The greatest tension of a string recorded by Messrs. ”

“ In some pianos the soft pedal presses a special damper against the strings; and a third kind of device moves the hammers nearer the strings so that they deliver a lighter blow. These two methods of damping are confined to upright pianos.
A high-class piano is the result of very careful workmanship. The mechanism of each note must be accurately regulated by its tiny screws to a minute fraction of an inch. It must be ensured that every hammer strikes its blow at exactly the right place on the string, since on this depends the musical value of the note. ”

“ He snapped over a filament-controlling toggle switch set into the long bench, and the beautiful set became instantly alive, transformed from a mechanically perfect but inanimate instrument of wood and wire to a living, glowing thing—a Twentieth Century horn of plenty, taking in at one end invisible and inaudible frequencies of electricity and releasing them as man-controlled music and speech. ”

“ When the key K is depressed an intermittent current from the main battery B is directed to the line-wire W, and passes through the electro-magnet E of a receiving instrument R at the distant end of the circuit, and thence to the ground G. The steel reed A is placed in front of the receiving magnet, and when its normal rate of vibration is the same as the reed of the transmitting instrument it is thrown into powerful vibration, emitting a musical tone of a similar pitch to that produced by the reed of the transmitting instrument, but if it is normally of a different pitch it remains silent. ”

“ The translator has had occasion to examine this point, and has found iron, steel, and cobalt wires varying from 4 to 10 inches in length, including some used by Reis himself as receivers, to be capable of taking up vibrations from as slow as 40 per second to the very shrillest whistle audible to human ears, or exceeding 36,000 per second. It is sometimes also mistakenly supposed that such a wire can respond only to the vibrations of tones that are musical, not to those that are articulate, including both consonants and vowels. ”

“ C is a steel tuning fork. The secondary circuit is closed through a telephone receiver. These wires are extended so that the receiver is too far distant for the tuning fork to be heard through the air. When the switch S is closed the tuning fork acts as the interrupter for the primary circuit, and it interrupts according to its time of vibration. If, for instance, the fork gives the tone of middle C on the piano it vibrates 256 times a second. It interrupts the primary circuit 256 times a second. It induces an alternating current of the same frequency in the secondary circuit. ”

“ In booth No. 56 you will find a piano played by electricity. Its keys are moving, but no hands strike them. There is no ghost at work here. A little strip of iron has been placed upon the under side of each key and a small electro-magnet is placed under that. It is only necessary that wires should run from these electro-magnets to two dry-battery cells and to push buttons, and a person far away may play the piano. In reality, however, it is not a person but a roll of punctured paper that opens and closes the electric circuits to these various magnets underneath the keys. ”

“ With the musical sound given out by these vibrating strings must inevitably be mixed the dull and unmusical sound of the blow that set them vibrating. The trained ear will detect not only the thud of the hammer against the string, but that of the finger against the key, and that of the key itself upon its base. The study of touch and tone upon the piano is the study of the combination and the control of these two elements of sound, the one musical, the other unmusical. ”

“ At the top of each leg is a richly engraved band of brass, and rosette, to conceal the place where the pin held the leg to the instrument. The drawer knobs were doubtless brass also, for these are not the original ones. The panel above the keyboard is beautifully painted in metallic lustre, and has two carved panels besides, over velvet. The legs are boldly carved with the acanthus leaf, and everything about the piano is as elegant as possible. By the time these last two instruments were made music had taken a decided advance. Musical societies were organized in all the large cities ”