IMPROVEMENTS IN WIND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Year: 1868

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Joseph Louis Réné Steckel
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition,
on the 25th September 1868.
I, JOSEPH LOUIS RÉNÉ STECKEL, of Ottawa City, Canada, and of Serle
St., Lincoln's Inn, in the County of Middlesex, Civil Engineer, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN
WIND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS," to be as follows:-
This Invention applies to all wind musical instruments of a tubular
form (whether of wood or metal) wherein the various notes are produced
by the stopping or unstopping of holes or openings either with the
fingers or by keys, such as, for instance, flutes, flageolets, clarionets, oboes,
bassoons, keyed trumpets, and the like; and the object of the Invention
is to improve the sound emitted from such instruments and at the same
time to facilitate and simplify the respective fingerings at present in use
on this class of musical instruments. This object I attain by substituting
for the circular and comparatively small holes or openings now in use on
such instruments openings of an oblong form and of much larger area
relatively to the size of the tube than ordinary, and increasing gradually

page_text: in size from the foot of the instrument to the embouchure. These
openings are to be made with their longer axis lengthwise of the tube,
and although necessarily oblong in form need not indispensably be
elliptical or oval, but may be of any other regular or irregular outline, as
much breadth being given to the openings as is allowable without inter-
fering in any way with the free and efficient working of the keys or
fingers. It will be found that tubular wind instruments made according
to this system will possess a greatly improved tone, and also that the
fingering will be considerably facilitated and simplified, inasmuch as in
some instruments the fingering of the lower, middle, and upper octaves
will be precisely similar. I also propose to effect a notable alteration
and improvement in the form of the key for stopping and unstopping
these openings. Instead of the key presenting a plane surface towards
the interior of the instrument, thus leaving a recess between it and the
interior concave surface of the tube, which destroys more or less the
continuity and regularity of each sound emitting air pulse (as in the
instruments now in use) I make the inner face of the key with a pro-
jection of such thickness and form as to fill up the hole, so that when
closed its surface shall be flush with the interior surface of the tube, thus
preventing to a great extent such disturbance of the passing sound waves
as would occur if the recess were left unfilled as usual. The ordinary
padded surface of the key is also to a great extent dispensed with, the
padding being only applied along the bearing edge of the key to secure
the necessary hermetical contact between it and the edge of the hole
which constitutes its seat. To reduce as much as possible the angle of
motion through which the key has to pass in order to establish an
efficient communication between the air in the tube and that surrounding
it, the frame or back of the key instead of being flat and in a plane
tangent to the tube is curved so as to have its surface parallel to and
concentric with the tube or thereabouts, and the seat of the padding
along the edge of the key is also made to assume a corresponding
curve.