Joseph Newman

Biography

Joseph Newman was one of several new piano-makers who emerged in Baltimore around 1850, becoming a well-known inventor and manufacturer operating with family members under the name Newman & Brothers. In 1857 he patented an 'improvement in sounding-boards' -- a double sounding-board with two sets of strings -- that provoked controversy because it was copied from a design James Pirsson of New York had introduced and patented the same year. Some time after 1853 Newman partnered with W. R. Talbot, a piano-maker newly arrived in Baltimore from Albany, forming Newman Brothers & Company. Newman built pianos on his patented plan and exhibited them, but they never achieved lasting popularity and were soon abandoned. He devoted considerable effort to the upright piano, producing notable improvements in case structure and action construction, though the American public showed little interest in uprights at the time, leaving much of his work unrewarded.

Highlights

• A well-known Baltimore inventor and manufacturer whose family firm traded as Newman & Brothers
• Patented a double sounding-board with two sets of strings in 1857, copied from a design by James Pirsson of New York
• Partnered with W. R. Talbot to form Newman Brothers & Company and developed notable upright-piano case and action improvements

Source

Daniel Spillane, History of the American Pianoforte (1890), pp. 134, 135.

Public domain.