Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau

The last few weeks I did not send any update information. However I have been working for almost day and night to work on an new project.
In ancient times – that’s more than 3 months ago – I mentioned the German “Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau” published from 1880 to 1943. For those of you that are passionate downloading fans, on the relevant page you can find how to download all 63 Volumes, some 35 gigabytes.

http://www.harmoniumnet.nl/zfib-zeitschrift1880-1943.html#English

Those 63 volumes, over 55,000 pages are available as Acrobat, however not searchable.
That is why I decided a few weeks back to start compiling thematic brochures in Acrobat by retyping the full text in my text processor and converting the results in a searchable pdf-file.
I started with a few volumes at the same time:
Volume 1: Schiedmayer in Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau.
Volume 2: Stuttgart Exhibition 1881
Volume 3: Nürnberg Exhibition 1882 (this one almost ended in a verbal war in Germany)
Volume 4: Amsterdam Exhibition 1883, the one where the Mason & Hamlin 3mp with pipetop that was in the Exhibition, was found here in the Netherlands last year, in playing condition! In this volume I not only retype the text, I also added comments and statistical analyses.
Volumes 2 and 3 will be ready for download later this week on the page mentioned above.

In order to be able to keep on working on disclosure of historical data on Harmoniums and builders, I purchased three new books the last months. One is about the “Tafelpiano” and is merely for finding data on builders and artisanal inventors from that period. (A Tafelpiano is de predecessor of the Square Piano, the Anglo-Saxon name).

All brochures are in German. Since I finished over 130 full pages now, translation will be a future project. Or maybe one of you like to do a part of that? During typing the German text, I have used – advised by knowledgeable Germans – to use modern spelling. So I did that.

End of the week you will be treated with a real update message, some changes in the website.

Cheers,

Frans