Bleuthner, history of piano tuners/technicians

[Michael Wathen 556-9565]

Dennis Johnson,

It's been at least ten years since I read Hipkin's book. So I don't remember all
that there is to continue my argument.  The problem arises because Hipkin's is
quoted as an authority on the subject of temperament.  He may have had a good
understanding about the development of the piano.  From what I know Bach never
even played a piano, although somewhere I have read that he heard is son perform
on one shortly before he died.

I have spent years trying to get people around me to realize that equal
temperament is a modern invention championed by Piano tuners and probably
beginning with Hipkins.  The fact that Hipkins could make a statement about Bach
as he did leads me to mistrust his statements in other areas, particularly when
he refers to Chopin.  Show me the source where Chopin talks about his good
friend Hipkins.  Chopin wrote many letters but I have never heard him endorse
the ideas of Hipkins.  I'm not saying that he never did, only, if you know of a
source I would like to know about it also.

I'm will be willing to eat my words if my arguments are invalid. I appreciate
your latest post as I'm sure others do.  I am not "blasting" you or your ideas.
I really value this medium for discussion and I think we all need to feel that
we can give and take with out fear of stepping on someone's toes.  It seems that
this word "blasting" has a broad definition.

I want to retract another comment that I made and I think it was in that same
post that Dennis refers to.  I believe I stated that it would be a good idea to
measure the time it takes a hammer to travel from rest through letoff with a
stop watch.  Well, I tried it today and found it quite difficult to do.  the
reason I suggested it is that I have in my shop a device that actually measures
the speed of the shank near letoff.  It gives me a reading in 0.0000 seconds.
It consists of a photogate that the shank passes through and some kind of a
counting device.  This measurement gives me a good idea of how large the
Inertial component is.  More on this latter.