Melville Clark

Biography

Melville Clark, born in Oneida County, New York, inherited a love of music and served an apprenticeship as a piano and organ tuner before traveling widely. In California he started a factory producing high-grade organs, selling his interest in 1877 due to a limited market. After a brief stay in Quincy, Illinois, he began making organs in Chicago in 1880 under the firm name Clark & Rich. In 1884 he joined Hampton L. Story to found Story & Clark, known as an expert reed-organ builder holding many patents; the firm became the Story & Clark Organ Company in 1888, with Clark as vice-president, and began making pianos in 1895. In 1900, after sixteen years with the firm, Clark left to found the Melville Clark Piano Company with $500,000 capital, building modern factories at De Kalb, Illinois. There he devoted himself to player-piano mechanisms, producing an 88-note cabinet player in January 1901, an 88-note interior player piano in 1902, and his first grand player piano in 1904, which was played in public concert at New Orleans in December 1906 under L. Grunewald & Company. His patents included a downward key-touch application and a transposing device later adopted by other player-piano makers under license. Melville Clark of Chicago was credited by the author with several epoch-making player-piano inventions. His recording apparatus was said to reproduce not merely the notes but the 'soul' of a performer's playing, capturing phrasing and touch in enough detail that the player mechanism could re-create it faithfully, independent of the operator's pedaling. He invented a self-acting metronome motor that let the music roll travel at the correct tempo regardless of pedaling speed, a down-stroke key action placed in front of the fulcrum to preserve human expression of touch, and an adjusting/transposing device allowing music to be shifted to any key. He was the first to perfect an eighty-eight-note player mechanism, superseding the earlier sixty-five-note standard, and more than 250 patents were issued to him for pneumatic and player-piano improvements. Coming from a musical family and trained as a tuner and tone regulator of organs and pianos, he built the Apollo grand and upright player pianos. He was described as a man of intense energy who devised his plans anywhere, of high personal and business honor, broad sympathies, modesty, and quiet good humor. Melville Clark was a prolific inventor of player-piano mechanisms in the years around 1900. He patented a transposing device on May 30, 1899, and again on September 30, 1902, a system subsequently adopted by many manufacturers of player pianos. In 1901 Clark introduced his "Apollo" player, notable for using an 88-note tracker board rather than the older 65-note compass, an innovation that most other player manufacturers went on to adopt for the good of the instrument. He later addressed the objectionable stiffness of interior player actions by patenting, on August 1, 1905, and again in March 1907, a construction placing the stroke button in front of the fulcrum of the piano key. Dolge illustrates several of Clark's patented mechanisms with technical drawings across multiple pages. Melville Clark is thanked by name in Alfred Dolge's foreword among ten men whose 'kind and valuable assistance' Dolge credits as essential to the book, without which it 'would lack much important data.' The text does not specify what assistance Clark gave, his occupation, or company affiliation beyond this acknowledgment.

Highlights

• Thanked by name in Dolge's foreword for 'kind and valuable assistance' supplying data used in the book.
• Patented a transposing device (1899, 1902) adopted by many player-piano manufacturers
• Introduced the "Apollo" player in 1901, the first to use an 88-note tracker board, later adopted industry-wide
• Patented placement of the stroke button in front of the key fulcrum (1905, 1907) to reduce action stiffness
• Co-founded Story & Clark with Hampton L. Story in 1884; served as vice-president of the incorporated Story & Clark Organ Company from 1888.
• Left to found the Melville Clark Piano Company in 1900 with $500,000 capital, building factories at De Kalb, Illinois.
• Patented numerous player-piano improvements, including a downward-touch key mechanism and a transposing device later licensed to other makers; produced the first 88-note cabinet player (1901), interior player piano (1902), and grand player piano (1904).
• Invented a recording apparatus that captures the touch and phrasing of a piano performance so a player mechanism can reproduce it exactly
• First to perfect an eighty-eight-note player mechanism (as against the earlier sixty-five-note)
• Held over 250 patents for improvements in pneumatics and player-piano mechanism, including a self-acting metronome motor and a key transposing device

Source

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), pp. 154, 377; Vol. II (1913), pp. 73, 74, 75, 76.

Public domain.