John Dwight

Biography

John Dwight was a Boston piano-maker who appeared on Common Street around 1822. Described as inventive, he patented the application of a 'longitudinal iron bar' to the piano on July 29, 1824, anticipating by about sixteen months a minor feature later associated with Babcock's metal plate. Dwight subsequently became partner of Daniel B. Newhall in the firm Dwight & Newhall, which exhibited pianos in 1839 aimed at the market for low-priced instruments and which, as far as could be determined, devoted itself entirely to that class of trade. In 1841 Dwight & Newhall patented an ingenious method of adjusting piano keys intended to replace the standard method then (and still) in use, though the innovation did not succeed commercially. John Dwight was a pupil of John Osborn in Boston and one of the apprentices Spillane lists among those trained in Osborn's shop, alongside Jonas Chickering, the Gilbert brothers, William Danforth, and Elijah Bullard. Dwight is credited by Spillane with anticipating Alpheus Babcock's celebrated metal-plate innovation for square pianos through an earlier design using a longitudinal metal bar, which Spillane speculates may have furnished Babcock with the idea for his own plate.

Highlights

• A pupil of John Osborn, apprenticed alongside Jonas Chickering and the Gilbert brothers.
• Anticipated Alpheus Babcock's metal-plate innovation with an earlier longitudinal metal-bar design.
• Patented the application of a 'longitudinal iron bar' to the piano on July 29, 1824, anticipating a minor feature of Babcock's plate by about sixteen months.
• Became partner of Daniel B. Newhall in the firm Dwight & Newhall, which specialized in low-priced instruments.
• With Newhall, patented an ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful method of adjusting piano keys in 1841.

Source

Daniel Spillane, History of the American Pianoforte (1890), pp. 56, 57, 89.

Public domain.