Harold Conklin

[Kirk Beasley]

I agree whole-heartedly with your assessment of Harold.  I worked for him in
the late 1970s and helped to build and test the Conklin-Van Nuis ( Pieter Van
Nuis, a great friend, beer-lover and piano technician who is sorely missed)
action listed below.  He is without a doubt the most underutilized asset in
the design community.

Kirk_Beasley@msn.com
Still surfing the amber waves of grain

----------
From: 	owner-pianotech@byu.edu on behalf of Michael Wathen 556-9565
Sent: 	Wednesday, July 31, 1996 11:35 PM
To: 	pianotech%byu.edu%external@beta.uc.edu
Subject: 	Harold Conklin

Has anybody checked out the article by Harold Conklin in the June
issue of <Journal of Acoustical Society of America>?  The title
is "Design and Tone in the mechanoacoustic piano..Part 1. Piano
hammers and tonal effects"  It details the effect of hammer
weight on the tonal spectrum of a note.  Conklin shows two traces
of the note G6, one had a normal weight and the other had a 4.6
gram weight added to the hammer.  Some type of device was used to
provide an equal key velocity with both cases.  This means that
the heavier weight actually provided a blow from the hammer with
a slightly greater hammer velocity.  The heavier hammer sounded
"choked off".  It is well worth reading.

Harold Conklin is a soft spoken genius of the piano that many are
not acquainted with in our field.  He probably holds more piano
patents then any single person in the history of the piano.  At
last count it was twenty.


Stanwood... how about this:


	H. A. Conklin and P. W. van  Nuis, U.S. Patent No.
4,381,691, "Touch Force Adjustment means for a Piano" (3 May
1983).


Conklin's patents are extremely well written.  They are very
informative, undeceptive, and read like textbook engineering at
its best.


Michael Wathen