modern vs old (was: Inharmonicity)

[Ron Nossaman]

Hi Stephen,

In the context of the discussion, I don't see any problem at all with what
you do. Some time in the 1930's, I think, someone dredged up a Coelecanth
<sp>. It's a big "primitive" fish "known" to be extinct for about twenty
million years. Talk about a shelf life! Why didn't these critters evolve
into guppies and carp like the rest of their contemporaries? Apparently,
they didn't need to. The "design" was adequate to the job. It's the same
with your corner of the business. You aren't trying to pass off a two
hundred year old design as NEW and IMPROVED with a flashy package and a late
night TV spot. It is what it is and is judged within it's own set of
criteria. Modern design isn't necessarily better any more than antiquated
design is inferior. Everything is relative to everything else and must be
judged in context, regardless of what your kids try to tell you. Today, the
average piano tech has greater access to a bigger pool of more detailed
technical information than ever before in history. That doesn't mean that
this same average tech will understand and assimilate the bulk of this
information. In the case of the instruments which are your forte (groan %-)
), the details of design and construction must be observed after the fact,
and the reasoning behind the design divined through interpretation. The
trick here (often overlooked) is not to assume that ANYTHING was done
arbitrarily. The people responsible for the development of these old
instruments were at least as smart as we think we are, or at least no dumber
than our relatives consider us to be. Someone like yourself is attempting to
re-discover the technology of the times by sifting through the habitation
layers. Interestingly enough, the proof of your conclusions is ultimately in
the subjectivity of the end user, just like with a modern instrument. I
enthusiastically agree that pursuing lost knowledge is a worthwhile mission.
I have no doubt that plenty of promising lines of technological exploration
were abandoned because of inferior manufacturing techniques (Babbage) or
administrative narrow-mindedness (Tesla). Back when I had time for hobbies,
I used to make arrowheads. Oddly enough, first hand experience in learning
how to control fracture in hard stone has since come in handy living in a
masonry house. House knapping, go figure! 

As for the truly insightful engineer, put me down for a whole bunch of them,
this is a rare bird and we can use all you've got. If you're currently out
of stock, I'll wait. Engineers aren't any different than the rest of us,
except in the specifics of their education. Common sense is, you know, an
oxymoron. There exists in engineers, as in doctors, lawyers, and school
custodians, a range of intelligence from genius to idiot, a range of
competence from exemplary to undetectable. Some of them seem to mellow and
improve (like cheese) as the years pass since they escaped the negative
influence of their formal education. Others remain the cocky, self
glorifying, and thoroughly dangerous individuals they were at age eighteen.
Unfortunately genius and insanity are often mis-identified, one with the
other and we laymen (generally) categorically tend to take the sterling
qualifications of engineers as a given. This is a dangerous attitude. If an
"authority" makes a statement or claim that seems contrary to your
experience you should question it. If it is kept as friendly as possible,
somebody's bound to learn something. Hopefully me, that's why I'm here.  

Blather blather blather - sorry about that, must be getting old. Off to work.

Ron



At 12:31 AM 11/5/97 -0500, you wrote:
>After quite a bit of seiving, Ron wrote somewhere down at the bottom:
>>... The whole point was to try to illustrate that the modern piano is
>> not the culmination of a linear evolutionary process any more than a modern
>> engineer knows everything that all the engineers preceding him knew. It
>> isn't cumulative. 
>> 
>
>What about someone such as myself, making old pianos like they were always
>made? (excepting irrelevant time saving differences in working practice
>like power planers for preparing stock, bandsaws etc.)...the design and
>intellectual aesthetic is being reproduced. How does the idea of doing 
>things like our predecessors did, for the same reasons they did, fit?
> 
>Using past knowledge and applying to our own purpose is a different
>thing...I do think there is a lot of stuff out there to be "re-discovered"
>and utilized in our modern context. What you say is true that progress
>(whether pianos or anything else) is the result of feedback with past
>history, not just a linear process. But the truly insightful engineer is
>the one who has a grip on where modern practices came from and can see 
>all the pieces of the jigsaw, at least their shapes, if not the pictures 
>on the pieces. 
>
>Stephen
>
>Stephen Birkett Fortepianos
>Authentic Reproductions of 18th and 19th Century Pianos
>464 Winchester Drive
>Waterloo, Ontario
>Canada N2T 1K5
>tel: 519-885-2228
>email: birketts@wright.aps.uoguelph.ca
>
>


 Ron Nossaman