Christian F. T. Steinway’s Invention for Capodastro Frames for Piano Fortes set the bar for piano design.
Steinway Pianos
In 1853, Steinway & Sons was formed. Operations began in a rental loft at 85 Varick Street in New York City. The Steinway business was a family affair, with father, Henry Engelhard Steinway, working as both a master cabinet maker and a master piano builder. Doretta, the eldest daughter, was the star salesperson, sometimes offering to give free piano lessons to prospective buyers in order to close a sale. Christian Friedrich Theodore Steinway was the eldest son of five boys and three girls.
When the rest of the family originally immigrated to the United States, Theodore (as he was known) stayed behind to run his own piano factory in the family’s native Germany. After the death of two of his younger brothers, Theodore was asked to give up his business and join the family business in New York as a partner. He arrived in New York in 1865 and became head of the technical department of Steinway & Sons.
Who Was Theodore Steinway?
Theodore was a brilliant, meticulous engineer and scientist. He leaned heavily on theoretical research in acoustics. Building on the work of his brother, Henry, Jr., he accelerated the pace of invention, research, and development within the company and was responsible for most of the major improvements associated with Steinway & Sons. The company licensed Theodore’s patents—45 of the firm’s 101 patents—for its exclusive use.
The technical changes Theodore proposed in his patents gave Steinway pianos greater strength and stability, more responsive action, bigger, purer sound, greater ease of repair, improved design and better tools for piano construction. Most changes focused on the plate, case, hammer jack and spring, and soundboard. Of the 15 Steinway patents granted before the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, 13 related to grand pianos. The 26 patents granted between 1878 and 1885 included 11 for grands, 11 for uprights, and 4 that either applied to both types or improved manufacturing techniques. Theodore’s success with upright pianos in Germany encouraged him to persist with their large scale production in the U.S.
The Steinway Piano Patents
After studying the steel industry in the U.S. and Europe, he succeeded in producing a cast frame which permitted string tension to be nearly doubled. Controlling string tension allows for better control of the sound quality. As an experiment, he built a parlor grand that was only 6 feet long, but had the same power and tone as a much larger instrument. Before the end of the 19th century, the Steinway grand was substantially the instrument we know today and the upright had become the universal home piano.
Theodore Steinway had created a piano which was accepted as the piano standard throughout the world.
U.S. Patent # 204,111 was very significant in the history of pianos and musical instruments.
“The capodastro bar was quite a revolutionary development in its time and is still very much a standard part of every Steinway grand piano. It has been copied by practically every other piano maker since the patent expired a long time ago and is now standard in every piano made all over the world,”
~ Theodore’s great nephew, John H. Steinway.
Even today the Steinway name is known and recognized worldwide as a leader in piano development.
For more information on the history of patent models, take a look at my book Inventing a Better Mousetrap: 200 Years of American History in the Amazing World of Patent Models, available now on Amazon. Read an excerpt here.
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