Paul B. Klugh

Biography

Paul B. Klugh was born in Detroit in 1878, of Holland descent. Leaving school at fifteen, he took a job as an errand boy in a music store for three dollars a week, and as a boy built a tricycle that printed advertising on sidewalks, an invention halted by police regulation. In 1893 he met William B. Tremaine of The Aeolian Organ and Music Company and became fascinated with self-playing organs; while selling organs from a wagon to Michigan farmers he studied piano-player mechanisms, later selling player instruments in Detroit and, from 1902, in Missouri and Southern Illinois. When The Cable Company began manufacturing player pianos in 1904, Klugh was chosen to design them and organize the manufacturing department, producing a long string of patents for the Carola Inner Player and Euphona mechanisms, including a miniature keyboard (1906), transposing device (1907), triplex pedal mechanism (1907), automatic accenting device, and an automatic solo device capable of independently striking eighty-eight accompaniment and eighty-eight solo notes. In 1910 he chaired joint meetings of player and music-roll manufacturers that standardized industry measurements. In 1913 he was promoted to director and vice-president of The Cable Company. Klugh obtained a patent on October 9, 1906, for an auxiliary key mechanism intended to overcome the objectionable stiffness of the interior player-piano action, the same problem Melville Clark addressed with his stroke-button placement. Dolge illustrates Klugh's auxiliary key device with a technical drawing. No further biographical detail is given.

Highlights

• Patented an auxiliary key mechanism on October 9, 1906, to relieve stiffness in interior player actions
• Born in Detroit in 1878; began work as a music-store errand boy at $3/week and built a printing tricycle as his first invention.
• Designed player-piano mechanisms for The Cable Company from 1904 onward, patenting the Carola Inner Player, miniature keyboard (1906), transposing device (1907), triplex pedal mechanism (1907), and an automatic solo device.
• Chaired the 1910 joint meeting of player and music-roll manufacturers that standardized industry measurements; promoted to director and vice-president of The Cable Company in 1913.

Source

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), p. 153; Vol. II (1913), pp. 62, 63, 64, 65.

Public domain.