Duplex Scale Tuning/hearing impairment and piano design

[Bdshull@AOL.COM]

Doug, Del, list:

I picked up on this thread rather late -- forgive me for missing a lot of it. 
 Read Doug's note and couldn't resist this:

D. W. Fostle, in "The Steinway Saga", pp. 107-114, discusses the problems of 
hearing loss in the Steinways.  Not only Heinrich himself, but the two 
Steinway sons most associated with the modern Steinway, Henry Jr. and 
Theodore, were hearing impaired, and Fostle suggests that the short-term 
hearing loss associated with alcohol further affected Henry's hearing.  Even 
the factory workers may have been permitted to drink rather freely, with 
similar short-term effects.  

Fostle has too many interesting statements to quote them all, but here are a 
couple, from p. 114:  

Referring to the "'unpleasant tone' to which some objected,...produced in the 
upper partials of the individual notes":  "It is likely that Heinrich, 
Charles, and Henry Steinway -- and probably William -- did not hear these 
partials in the same way that others did, if the Steinways heard them at 
all." 

"Decisions at the largest piano manufactory in America, whose instruments and 
their sound was the benchmark for the future, were made by men with a unique 
perception of the auditory world."

Bill Shull

Fully sober, neglecting my shop deadline while writing about typhus- and 
alcohol-impaired piano builders on the net....

<< What was Steinway's role in developing the duplex scale? I'm sure to some
 folks in those earlier days the Steinways, which I believe were continually
 getting louder and brasher sounding were too much. A technician friend of
 mine was reading something about the early days of Steinway and the author
 was speculating that a lot of people in the factory in those days could have
 actually had major hearing loss. I guess we were just talking about why
 Steinway started using hammer hardeners. If there is any truth to that maybe
 it could apply to the duplex scale as well. Of course there is no way to
 prove that but when he told me it made me wonder. It might have been from
 the man that translated Helmholtz's book.  Sorry I cannot remember the
 source. I'll ask next time I see him. >>