In a message dated 3/30/99 7:06:20 PM, you wrote: <<"Using that logic, is it correct to assume that Anderson & Co. produced 45,000 pianos in their first year, 1914? I'm also stumped. John Piesik, RPT">> Fellow stumpee John; I don't know. I think that we need to take the atlas and Manufacturers serial Nos. with a grain of salt and prudence. For example Cable produced, according to the serial Nos. in the atlas, a certain number of pianos every year, no problem ...huh? But every serial No. listed ends with 00 and most end with 000, and this begins in 1903. S&S does the same and their numbers start at 1000 in 1856 ! Now unless these companies were models of virtuous planning and produced an even number, i.e. 00 or 000, of pianos each and every year these numbers must be wrong to some extent if we read them as indicating the number of units or an 'ending' serial number...........or it looks that way to me :-) AND then......... looking at ole Steinway, in 1856, producing 1,000 pianos his first year in business would have been a prodigious feat....huh? So these things along with Bords' number, #1, lead me to think that the numbers were commonly assigned in blocks at the first of each year or production run. (and since there is no evidence to the contrary we must assume that Bord only made 'one' piano that year.................or that the first piano produced that year was numbered....... ta! da!......... No. 1. :-) Thusly, if my thinking is anywhere near close, there may have been say a block starting with s.n.1,000 for 1903, with the first piano that year being numbered 1,000. There may have been only 814 pianos produced that year , so the last piano produced would have been numbered 1,813........right ??? IDK! The following year would start with numbers at 2,000, etc., etc. Am I right?...well IDK!!...but it makes some kind of sense to me and it seems more logical than assuming at least two companies stopped their production every year when numbers ended in only 00, or 000, with one of them doing so sucessfully each and every year for 143 years....I think :-) Jim Bryant (FL)
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