Robert Wornum - Double Actions and Piccolo Uprights

Double Actions and Piccolo Uprights

In 1826 Wornum patented improvements to what he called in the specification the professional piano, claiming a pizzicato pedal positioned between the two ordinary pedals and operating linkages arranged to press the dampers against the strings, a pinned single action where the damper lever was raised by a button at the end of a wire attached to an extension on the sticker and two double actions with additional levers mounted to a second rail for operating the dampers as well as checks for the hammer. The first of these was arranged like the action from his 1811 patent with the backward facing escapement on the key operating the check lever wire; in the second the check lever wire was operated by the sticker. The sticker was pinned to the underside of another lever, hinged to the hammer rail and carrying the escapement. The escapement worked on the principle of the English grand action with the regulating button fixed to the hammer rail, but with its spring mounted on the sticker instead of the lower part of the escapement. A fixed hammer return spring was not shown, and apparently in its place a spring was mounted on the hopper and worked against the hammer butt to prevent the hammer "from dancing after the hand is off the key".

Two years later Wornum patented an improvement to the sticker action with a button mounted at the end of the key made to check against an extension of the back end of the lower lever of the sticker in order to prevent unwanted movement of the hammers after each blow against the strings.

François-Joseph Fétis wrote in 1851 that he had played upon two of Wornum's uprights in 1829 and found they had significant, though unspecified, advantages over those of other manufacturers.

According to Hipkins Wornum had perfected the crank, or "tied" double action during this year, and introduced it in his cabinet and three feet eight inch tall (112 cm), piccolo uprights by 1830. In this action a flexible tie fastened to the hammer butt and to a wire mounted on the crank lever has the same function as the dog spring from the 1826 double action. The crank lever also operated a check working against an extension of the hammer butt and raised the damper wire. This arrangement has come to be known as the tape check action, the name which is also applied to the modern upright action which differs in the form of the jack and the position and operation of the damper lever. Hipkins claimed that the "facile touch gained by the new mechanism soon attracted the musical public" but it was not put in widespread use in Britain even after the 1826 patent expired; he wrote in about 1880 that its durability had made it "a favourite model of action for the manufacturers of the present day both here and abroad," and predicted that it would eventually replace the sticker action in England, having already been generally adopted in France and Germany.

This action was illustrated as "Wornum's double or piccolo action" in the article "Pianoforte" in the 1840 Penny Cyclopaedia (which listed "R. Wornum" as contributor for the articles on the piano and the organ) where it was described as "the invention of Mr. Wornum, and patented by him some ten or twelve years ago". A similar claim was stated on the regulating instructions pasted to double actions in Wornum's piccolo, harmonic and cabinet pianos.

This is not the only published account concerning the origin of this action, and in particular that of the flexible tie or bridle tape, as it is known today. Harding stated explicitly in The Pianoforte that Wornum "neither invented or patented" the tape and credited the invention to piano manufacturer Herman Lichtenthal of Brussels (and later Saint Petersburg), who received a patent for improvement in 1832 that shows an action which differs from the 1840 illustration primarily in the form and position of the damper lever and its mechanism. In 1836 French piano tuner, and later manufacturer, Claude Montal described in L'art d'accorder soi-même son piano that Camille Pleyel had introduced improvements to the design of Wornum's small uprights when he introduced the pianino in France in 1830, but although Montal describes the action and flexible tie in detail he did not specify whether they were among the changes. Both of these examples can also be distinguished for employing leather for the flexible tie rather than woven tape, which Harding tentatively credited to Wornum. Hipkins related that it was due to Pleyel's commercial success that the double action came to be called the "French action" in England.

The action has also become associated with the patent granted to Wornum in 1842, though often dated as having been introduced by him five years earlier, apparently in reference to its description as the "tape check action" in the annotated list of English patents applicable to pianos in piano manufacturer and historian Edgar Brinsmead's 1879 edition of History of the Pianoforte. In the 1870 edition this had been called more accurately the "tape action"