Richard Carte’s
Comments regarding the 1847 Boehm Patent
We continue the series of
articles examining statements made by English flute designer and maker
Richard Carte. Carte comments on two issues in Boehm's 1847 patent
which invite our attention.
Introduction
The main thrust of Carte’s 1851 “Sketch
of the Successive Improvements
in the Flute”, which was to stand as his major written
contribution to the historical record with respect to flute development,
was the promotion of his own newly-developed flute designs. These designs
utilized the 1847 Patent taken out by John Mitchell Rose of the firm
Rudall & Rose on behalf of Theobald Boehm. The Patent was fairly general
in its application, but incorporated the metal cylinder-bored version of
the Boehm flute which had been realized by Boehm in 1847 following a
period of intensive study and experimentation.
Carte very much appreciated the tonality
and intonation made possible by the Boehm Patent as applied to the flute,
but was firmly convinced that the associated fingering complexities
presented an insurmountable sales barrier. His own designs reverted in
large part to the old fingering of the 8-key flute with a substantial
number of additional facilities thrown in. His “Sketch” was largely
devoted to a consideration of the fingering difficulties of the Boehm
instrument and to the promotion of what he claimed as the superior
attributes of his own system allied to the Boehm Patent.
Issue No 1 - the Extent of the Patent
In the “Sketch”, Carte had occasion
to base his side of an argument directly upon the content of the 1847
Patent. In doing so, he made the following statement:
“Boehm's (1847) patent
relates only to the Flute, and does not extend to the material
of which it is formed” [our emphasis]
This must surely stand as
one of the most inexplicable statements ever made in relation to the flute
by a person as closely informed as Carte undoubtedly was, or should have
been. If we refer to the actual Patent specification (still available at
a very reasonable charge from the Patent Office in London), we find the
following wording:
“The invention consists
in: 1) Constructing flutes of all descriptions, clarionets and other
similar wind instruments, of metal instead of wood
or other materials; by which such instruments are more easily
kept in tune , and are less liable to crack from heat.” [our
emphasis]
The above paragraph clearly
does not relate “only to the flute” and most
definitely does “extend to the material of which it is
formed”! Carte has made two obvious mistakes in one sentence.
He had been closely familiar with the 1847 Boehm flute since its
introduction – indeed, he had openly utilized the Patent himself in the
development of his own 1851 Patent flutes which formed the main subject of
his “Sketch”, to the extent that his 1851 Patent flutes were
specifically marked as incorporating Boehm’s patent as well as Carte’s
own. It thus appears to be simply inconceivable that he could not have
known the true state of affairs regarding the contents of the patent. It
may be fascinating to speculate upon the reasons for Carte’s extraordinary
lapse, but the present authors will leave that to others.
It is of the greatest
interest to note that until now, no-one appears to have noticed or
commented upon Carte’s unmistakable and readily demonstrable gaffe. Given
the readiness of mid-nineteenth century commentators to seize upon each
others’ errors and attempt to make capital of them, this is perhaps
surprising. The best explanation that we can offer is the notion that
perhaps people simply didn’t bother to read the “fine print”, which in
this case would have required going to the trouble of obtaining a copy of
the actual Patent specification. There appear to be other examples of
this lack of attention to the details.
Issue No 2 - the Parabola
One of the key features of Boehm’s Patent
as it applied to the flute was the design of the head-joint, which is
described in the Patent specifications as being “conical, or rather in
the form of a parabola”. This feature was a major selling point in
Carte’s marketing strategy for his own 1851 Patent flutes, which utilized
this technology. Carte used the term “parabola” to characterize this
component of the flutes on the new bore, both in his “Sketch” and
in his promotional materials. However, it is beyond dispute that he was
not strictly correct in likening the form of this joint to a parabola, and
it also appears highly improbable that he could have been unaware of this.
In his long-unpublished 1847 “Essay”,
to which Carte undoubtedly had access through his close relationship with
George Rudall, Boehm himself stated merely that the basic form of his head
joint “approached the parabola” and terminated in a “hemisphere”.
The combined form in no way resembles a parabola, as Boehm clearly
recognized given his qualified use of the term “parabola” and his
use of the two distinct forms in describing the overall configuration.
Furthermore, in the wording of the British Patent taken out on Boehm’s
behalf by John Mitchell Rose, the form of the joint is described as “conical,
or rather in the form of a parabola”, as noted earlier. There is also
a cylindrical portion at the tuning slide end of the head joint. So, as
described by himself, Boehm’s head-joint was in fact a combination
of hemisphere, near-parabola and cylinder. Taken as a whole, it cannot
truly be considered to be a parabola, or anything like it. The following
sketch should help to make this clear:
The blue trace in the graph above shows
the dimensions of one of
Boehm’s
own heads, No 21, in the Dayton C Miller collection in Washington. The
vertical section at X = 0 is the stopper face, the open end at the right
is where the head plugs into the body.
The orange
trace shows a classic parabola (of the form y2 = kx) of the
same diameter at the open end, and the same overall length. It looks a
little odd here because the horizontal and vertical dimensions are
different in the opposite way to what we are familiar with – the parabolic
satellite dishes and lighthouse lamp reflectors we know have large
diameters and small depths, while this has a small diameter and
considerable depth.
Clearly the two
traces have little in common, indeed the head is closer to being a
cylinder than a parabola. It can be seen however, that if the length of
the orange parabola curve were to be greatly magnified, but the right hand
ends kept in the same place (i.e., the left hand centre of the parabola is
now 100 screens off to our left), the orange and blue traces would largely
coincide. This is presumably what Boehm
meant when he talked of the bore of the head “approaching” the form
of the parabola – he was referring to a specific portion of a parabolic
curve, not the curve as a whole. It is extremely difficult to believe
that, as a player and designer of flutes using this head-joint, Carte
would not have been aware of this.
(At this point,
an extremely interesting side matter presents itself – Boehm’s
mention of his head-joint design terminating in a hemisphere. We
are not currently aware of an extant Boehm
flute that has a hemispherical cavity rather than the usual flat-faced
stopper, but the green trace in the graph above would presumably
illustrate what it would look like. It seems to suggest that Boehm might
have been aware that the stopper cavity acts indeed as a cavity and not a
resonant column, although this is not borne out in his writing. In
any event, Carte himself makes no mention of the hemispherical termination
and it certainly would not convert the head taper into a parabola.
Interesting however -
if any reader
is aware of such a stopper applied to a Boehm flute, we would be grateful
for any information.)
However, even
this question of the stopper does not alter the fact that if we take the
whole of Boehm's
head-joint into account (the stopper, whether hemispherical or flat, the
intervening curved portion and the cylindrical portion approaching the
main bore), the form of the head-joint as a whole immediately loses any
resemblance whatsoever to a parabola. In that respect, the various
historical detractors of the use of the term “parabola” stand on
unassailable ground and Carte’s unqualified use of the term to describe
the form of the Boehm
head joint is undoubtedly not correct.
Compounding the felony
Although the
unqualified use of the term “parabola” to describe Boehm’s head
joint has been openly criticized in the past, we feel that Carte might
have got away with using the term “parabola” as a commercial
“label” as long as he clarified the use of the term in the manner set out
above, which he did not do. But even so, this is really an error of
little consequence, and if Carte had stopped there we might feel that
there would have been little to quibble about – we could set it down to a
simple example of commercial “spin” on his part, as others have done
before us. But he did not stop there – in his “Sketch”,
for reasons which are unclear, he chose to launch into a pseudo-scientific
explanation of the manner in which the “parabola” head joint
functioned, as follows:
"The
parabola-head-joint seems to effect that for propagating sound, which
the parabolic reflector does for propagating light. The vibrations are
concentrated in, and propelled from the one, as the rays of light are
concentrated in, and transmitted from the other, both with superior
velocity and power."
Well, really
………!!! Scientists from well before Carte's time would have been amazed to
find that both the speeds of sound and light, traditionally taken
as constants, were capable of enhancement through use of the parabola!
OK, you begrudge, let's ignore the claim about velocity. But what
about power - couldn't the reflective powers of the parabola increase the
effective power emanating from the instrument?
Unfortunately,
not at this size. Waves can only be successfully reflected by things
at least several times their wavelength, so we'd need a dish some metres
across to see substantial gain at flute frequencies. And in any case, as
we have noted earlier, the head-joint as a whole bears very
little resemblance to a parabola, a fact of which Carte could hardly have
been ignorant. Therefore, the comparison with a parabolic light reflector
has no factual or theoretical basis whatsoever, as Carte
must surely have been aware unless he was unbelievably ignorant regarding
the whole issue.
Indeed, Carte’s
own words elsewhere in the “Sketch” confirm that he was in
possession of evidence to suggest that the above “explanation” was
unfounded. Commenting on the fact that his new Patent flutes were
available either with the Boehm
cylinder bore (with "parabolic head") or the Improved Conoidal bore (with
cylindrical head) developed by John Mitchell Rose, Carte
claimed that the tone of
flutes built to his system using Rose’s new conoidal bore was:
“so much ………improved
that it becomes a matter of opinion whether the wooden flute, with
parabola and cylinder, or with this improved conical bore, is now the
better”.
It would appear that the old
cylindrical head gave the much-vaunted “parabola” a good run for
its money if this was the case! Indeed, anyone who has ever tried a modern
cylinder flute with a cylindrical head will have noticed that it is more
powerful than with the Boehm-tapered head. Tuning suffers though, as
does the quality of the notes as, with the cylinder head, the harmonics
are badly out of tune. Again though, a mortal blow to Carte's
parabolic propagation claim.
The most basic
consideration of Carte’s explanation set out above reveals it to be
meaningless mumbo-jumbo, presumably intended to impart a scientific spin
to the flutes which Carte was promoting in his “Sketch”. We have
noted in our “Historical Veracity”
essay that the motivation for incorrect statements is immaterial when
testing such statements for their accuracy – the only point that matters
is setting the record straight.
On the basis of
this examination, Carte’s comment regarding the function of the “parabola”
head is complete nonsense and also reinforces the view of his unqualified
use of the term “parabola” in his sales patter as another
misrepresentation. Even if it could somehow be proved that these were
honest errors and that Carte truly believed what he wrote (which is
undeniably possible), it would then reflect a surprising level of
ignorance on Carte’s part and would call both his powers of observation
and his fundamental understanding of acoustics into serious question.
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