J. Bauer Piano Company: The Tale of William Bauer, The Most Innovative Piano Designer

We are going to start with his father.

Julius Bauer was born in Berlin on July 20, 1831. At an early age confirmed natural expertise for constructing musical devices and by the time he was 18, experienced accumulated a lot of many years of knowledge functioning on pianos and violins. At this time, the revolution of 1848 was erupting, so he remaining for The us and arrived in New York.

Promptly opening his individual retail outlet, inside of 8 several years his firm experienced developed quickly. He leaves his brother John in cost of the New York shop and will come to Chicago in 1857 with his other brother Herman. They offered many piano makes these as Behning, Miller, McCammon, and Knabe.

In the great Chicago hearth of 1871, his business was destroyed. For the subsequent calendar year and a half, he operated in a church although having a new building built. Through this time of tragedy, his brother John dies, and so he closes down the New York department.

Although Bauer begun as a retailer, he before long began to create pianos that offered below his title. Bauer pianos became recognised for becoming exceptionally perfectly built pianos.

With his accomplishment, Bauer was able to pay for lavish warerooms in two important towns, Chicago and again in New York by 1880.

Julius dies in 1884 and his spouse Anna Marie takes over management of the organization.

Their son William was born in 1870, and just after graduating from Significant School, he goes on a European holiday vacation. When he arrives back again in Chicago, he commences his occupation in the manufacturing facility understanding anything he can about pianos from the floor up.

Now the fun begins. William turned out to be a gifted piano maker with an inventive intellect. In my belief, he was just one of the most unique thinkers in piano technology historical past.

(The next may well be a small technical.)

His patterns seem to be primarily based on stiffness. His plates are made so that the string rigidity is placed in a horizontal plane inside of the center of the plate, whilst in a “common” grand piano, the string rigidity is horizontally on major of the plate.

He goes a person phase further in his upright. A main flaw with uprights is that the sound can be smothered by the cabinet. William tackles this situation by placing the soundboard in the back of the instrument for utmost audio exposure, but the plate and the strings are in the center of the instrument. He connects the soundboard to the bridge and strings with dowels.

Quite incredible!

I suggest that you should see his patents which are available on-line by exploring Google Patents.

An additional example of his exceptional method is the soundboard alone. You can effortlessly place a Julius Bauer piano mainly because his soundboards have ribs on the prime and the base.

Afterwards he even invented a piano with no metal plate at all. It features a picket plate to exchange the conventional solid-iron plate with the purpose of providing the piano a sweeter tone.

His piano patterns and strategies of building ended up incredibly one of a kind and remarkably praised in his day. Right now they are well worth a second search, and they are really a lot worthy of restoring.

He sold his corporation to the Wurlitzer Piano Business in 1930 currently being hit hard during the Terrific Melancholy.

Wurlitzer ongoing to construct the Julius Bauer title up right up until about 1938.