using beats to tune

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Tom writes: 
<< I was surprised to learn that ET did not really 
exist prior to 1917.  Now, the part I'm unclear on: I believe that it was 
stated that this treatise, published in 1917, was the first to utilize the 
concept of listening to beats in order to tune a temperament.  
First of all, is the above information correct?  << 

  Greetings, 
      Richard B.'s response was, to my way of thinking, correct,  I will add 
the following; 
    I have a copy of W.Braid-White's 1906 publication,"Theory and Practise of 
Fortepiano Building" in which he clearly describes beats. Helmholtz had 
gotten fairly close to the same logic 30-4- years before.  Jerry Cree Fischer 
demonstrated the utility of hearing 11 bps in a booklet published, I think, 
in 1911.  
   However, rather than considering the concept of "listening to beats" in 
order to tune a temperament, maybe we should consider when it became the norm 
to "count" beats.  I think all tuning has been done by judging the amount of 
beating, but it was judged by "musical" standards earlier, and today is done 
by comparitive (counting and matching) standards.   
     By this I mean, the 1775 tuner, who was possibly a worker in an 
instrument shop or a local church choirmaster, hummed a tune, found his 
interval, listened to the quality of a third, made a decision, and went on to 
another, playing out an abstruse game of give and take until all the 
chords,(with their thirds) in an octave were arranged in some semblance of 
order.  That was a lot easier than trying to arrange an interlocking set of 
relationships that didn't vary between keys.    You could do this by musical 
judgement and not need to exactly match certain rates.  
     An analogy is the attempt to space 13 pennies exactly equidistant 
without the use of a measuring device other than your senses.  It is a lot 
easier to place them so that the spaces between them are each a little larger 
than the preceding one.  In the former, there is only one answer and it has 
to be replicated  exactly 12 times, in the latter, there is a lot of room for 
variety while still getting it 'right'. Which would be the temperament a 
worker would prefer to do?   

>>And if it's true that tuners 
didn't use beats to tune a piano prior to 1917,  what did they listen to?  

  Harmonic values, progressions as the thirds departed from C,(or in the 
Valotti style, F).  It isn't hard to make a pure C-E, then open it up a 
little so that you can fit four fifths between, etc.   They were listening to 
beats, but I don't think they were assigning a numerical value, just how 
"good" or harsh" they were.  That is why Jorgensen calls it a lost art, it 
was artistic musical judgement that made a good tuner, ET only calls for a 
scientific approach. ( I know, I know, the perfect ET "has to come from the 
tuner's ear and judgement", but when you get down to variations of 1 cent or 
less between keys, you are beyond the limit of discrimination for virtually 
all tuners and certainly all pianists. )  The modern hardware easily 
surpasses this on well scaled instruments,(big ones), and I don't think "art" 
describes something a computer chip will do in response to a set of numbers 
from us. (there is a huge semantics room involved here).    
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT