CHAPTER 4: Dulcimers in the British Isles since 1800 > 'British' dulcimers 1800-1945

The inventors

A search for references to dulcimers in the London Patent Office disclosed eight examples dated between 1897 and 1904. These were mostly ideas which related to a variety of instruments, not only dulcimers, and which had presumably been registered in case they were found to be marketable, rather than because they were actually already in production.

One example is for bridges for various instruments, the dulcimer version of which appears from the Specification Abridgement, to be no different from the 'chessman' standard throughout the 19th century; instruments using the other ideas have yet to be discovered.

Nevertheless, the possibility that they were used cannot be ruled out, so they are summarised below; and selected examples are reproduced here, partly because the notions are interesting, and partly to show their context - water velocipedes, fish-shaped aërostats and workmen's tea cans.

Date	No.	Name, Place	Invention
8.10.1895	18,844	Blacketer & Walline, Iowa	Pedal-operated hammers to play chords to accompany another instrument played with the hands.
14.10.1897	23,711	Schmidtlein, Berlin	Sounding boards tapered, hollowed out at the edge, presumably for better resonance
9.11.1897	26,020	Haddon, London (Schmidtlein)	As above, but with boards of uniform thickness etc.
24.10.1899	21,198	Gable, Baltimore	Coating & impregnating soundboards etc. with alkaline silicate to augment resonance
28.11.1899	23,764	Lake, Middlesex (Maynadier Boston)	Instead of hitch-pins, keyhole-shaped slots in a plate to secure string ends; & a cover
16.5.1901	10,150	Jackson, London	Bridges: metal bell-shaped cups; where several, joined by iron rods
9.2.1904	3166	Fairweather, Chicago	Hammer mechanism
28.3.1904	7395	Lyon, Paris	Sonorous bodies ... in combination with ... dulcimers ... to produce new effects

In connection with the scalloped-out edge of the sound-board (23,711) it is interesting to note that Howie Mitchell experimented with the same idea in the other dimension, actually cutting arcs out of the edge in order to reduce extent to which free vibration is restricted by the firm clamping of the edges to the side-blocks (16).