Mathushek Piano Manufacturing Company 制造商介绍

马修瑟
1866年，马修瑟接受了莫里斯施泰纳特的邀请，从纽约来到康乃迪克州管理刚成立的马修瑟钢琴制造公司。施泰纳特和其他投资者很快违背了原先的约定，并把公司转交给Henry S. Parmelee来管理，Henry的亲人Spencer T. Parmelee已经获得了调音弦轴销衬套的专利，用独特的管状木栓来代替木制弦轴板钉板将调音弦轴固定在外框的套筒上，自1862年到1865年间，金属框架一直都缺少木制结构部件。马修瑟的后人在1882年的音乐与戏剧报告中提到，Parmelee一开始就加入了公司，但在1868年，通过一些手段控制了除属于马修瑟外所有的股份。

In 1866 Morris Steinert, newly established as a music seller in New Haven, Connecticut, convinced Mathushek move from New York to superintend a piano manufacturing company newly organized as the Mathushek Piano Manufacturing Company. Steinert and his investors soon backed out of the concern, and ownership of the company passed to Henry S. Parmelee, whose relative Spencer T. Parmelee of New Haven had patented the tuning pin bushing, individual tubular wooden plugs pressed into a sockets in the cast frame to hold the tuning pins instead of a single structural wooden wrest plank bolted to the frame, and iron frame squares almost entirely lacking wood structural components in 1862 and 1865. Mathushek's grandson described in a report in Music and Drama from 1882, that Parmelee was involved in the firm from the start but by 1868 "managed, by certain means...to obtain control of all the stock except that belonging to...Mathuthek".

Alfred Dolge, who had worked at the factory between 1867 and 1869, wrote the newly formed company conducted a series of experiments in sounding board construction, and reported their preference for the now conventional construction, but they also introduced radical string arrangements in square pianos. Their tiny 4 feet 10 inch long (147 cm) Colibri had earned the highest awards for any piano at the 1867 American Institute fair,[4] and both it and their 6 foot 10 inch long (208 cm) Orchestral made use of the entire sounding board instead of only the right hand side as in conventional square pianos. This combination of straight bridges - the linear bridge - and the distribution of strings across the sounding board and iron frame - the equalizing scale, they claimed, produced "a volume and beauty of tone found elsewhere only in concert grands."

By 1871 the company also offered "harp form" parlor grands as well as concert grands,and within ten years introduced a 5 foot 9 inch (175 cm) long square, and an upright incorporating their tuning pin bushings for the purpose of holding tune better than more conventional designs.

In 1880 the Mathushek Piano Mfg. Co. established their own New York warerooms at 23 East 14th street, and advertised having more than 5,000 in use. By 1897 their factory was located at Washington avenue, at the corner of Brown in West Haven, and they advertised having sold more than 30,000 pianos.

The Parmelee Piano Works where Mathushek Piano Manufacturing Company's instruments were made had one of the first non-experimental fire sprinklers, installed by M. Seward & Son, of New Haven based on the design patented by Henry S. Parmelee in 1874.[18] Parmelee licensed the patent and improvements on a royalty basis by 1879 to the Providence Steam and Gas Pipe. Henry S. Parmelee patented seven improvements for sprinklers between 1874 and 1882, and also received patents for sounding board construction in 1884 and upright piano cases in 1885, with the central part of the case angled to form a music rest.

Parmelee died in 1902, but the company continued manufacturing at the same address. By 1912 Charles Jacob was president.

According to the account in the 1882 Music and Drama article, by 1870 Mathushek had returned to New York and was only nominally associated with the Mathushek Piano Manufacturing Company; Dolge dated this one year later, when he was listed there in unassigned patents he received for a system compensating wires arranged to counteract the bending strain of the main strings, and vertically bent key levers for upright pianos. By 1874 he was associated with David H. Dunham, of Dunham & Sons, with whom he patented improvements in iron frames and wrestplank bridges.

In 1877 the Mendelssohn Piano Company advertised their latest trichord squares used "Mathushek's new Duplex Overstrung Scale, the greatest improvement in the history of Piano making," and claimed to have received unanimous recommendation for the highest awards at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876,[24] where the Mathushek Piano Manufacturing Co. had also exhibited pianos.