FR Patent: FR-3,226
|
Un système d'instrumens à vent, dits: Saxophones
A system of wind instruments, known as Saxophone
|
|
Patentee:
|
|
| Adolphe Sax (exact or similar names) - Paris, France |
| Manufacturer: |
| Not known to have been produced |
|
|
Patent Dates:
|
| Applied: |
Mar. 21, 1846 |
| Granted: |
Jun. 22, 1846 |
Espacenet patent
Report data errors or omissions to steward
Jeff Joslin
|
|
Description: |
| Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax was born in what is now Belgium to a family of music-instrument makers. By the early 1840s he had begun making a new design of woodwind with tapered barrels and distinctive sound, and in 1844 he applied for a patent which was granted in 1846. He had earlier patented an improved bass clarinet (Belgian patent BE-1,051), and in 1850 he would obtain a Belgian patent, BE-5,469 on the saxophone family; that patent shows that considerable development had occurred in the intervening four years. He would subsequently patent an extended-range saxophone, although the latter invention did not achieve any commercial success.This early description of a family of instruments is fairly vague in a number of particulars. A very wide range of instruments was proposed, from sopranino to sub-contrabass. Sax was especially interested in improving the lowest-pitched wind instruments and this is evident in this patent where the now-obscure "saxophone bourdon" (sub-contrabass saxophone, named after the very low-pitched bourdon pipes found in the largest pipe organs) receives considerable attention. The lack of detail in the descriptions of most members of the family imply that at the time this patent was obtained, Sax had not yet worked out the details of the various instruments, nor had he converged toward a family based primarily on instruments tuned to B♭ and E♭. |
|
