File:The World almanac and encyclopedia (1908) (14780973691).jpg

Identifier: worldalmanacency1908newy (find matches)
Title: The World almanac and encyclopedia
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Almanacs, American Statistics
Publisher: New York : Press Pub. Co. (The New York World)
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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The sounding-boards are made of about seventeen small boards, but when they are finished andplaced in the pianos they look like a single board, so perfectly are the small piecesmated. In matching the small boards the expert in charge tlirows out nearly halfof them, because they do not conform as to grain and color. The boards thus 809 thrown out, despite the fact that they have been in treatment for years, are anutter loss, so far as the sounding-boards are concerned. The sounding-boards arealwajs made of spruce lumber. When the sounding-boards are placed in the pianos and fastened to the plate,the inside of a Steinway piano is as though it were made entirely of one hugepiece. This is due to the many patented devices controlled by the Steinway house,•which have been the result of years of experiment. IDEAS OF FOUNDER ARE STOLEN. When the original Steinway came to this country and began the manufactureof pianos—some fifty-five years ago—he failed to secure patents upon several of
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A ROW OF THE POPULAR VERTEGRANDS AT THE FIFTY-THIRD STREET FINISHING FACTORY. his great improvements, with the result that many competitors appropriated hisIdeas and began the manufacture of imitation Steinways, for commercial pur-poses alone, with the result that the strictly commercial piano came into being,and is to-day sold by the thousands to persons who know a piano only by itsoutside appearance, and cannot understand why the Steinways demand such agood pince for their product when something that looks as nice can be obtainedfor much less. Some of these commercial pianos are made from lumber that is not seasonedtwo weeks, and in many cases actually fall apart after being used a short time.Such pianos are merely assembled. For instance, a commercial piano manu-facturer, who is after only the money, buys his piano cases of one firm, his platesof another, his action and keys of a third, and so on until he acquires all theparts. Then he throws them together after a fashion, and they

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