[78-L] Concert pitch (was: no subject)

[Michael Shoshani]

On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 09:34 -0400, James Tennyson wrote:
> After about 1890  in North 
> America at least, most organizations were tuning ( the pianos at least)  at 
> either A=440 or A = 435.  

The famous NBC chimes began their life as a series of tones struck by
hand on various models of dinner chimes manufactured by the J. C. Deagan
Company of Chicago. These were used beginning in 1929 or so and
continued until 1932 in New York and until 1937 in San Francisco and
Hollywood.

Despite the fact that J. C. Deagan himself (who passed away in 1910) was
one of the major champions of A=440, I have never found a set of Deagan
dinner chimes, either in my own possession or that of the extensive
holdings of the Deagan Museum, that was NOT A=435.  

This provides a pitfall for radio collectors who attempt to adjust the
playback speed of transcriptions of this era by pitching them at A=440.
The only corrrect way of adjusting the speed is to pitch the record so
that the notes (usually C-A-F on the Deagan 20 or G-E-C on the Deagan
200) are at A=435. 

NBC went to electrically-operated chimes after the hand-struck chimes
were phased out; I don't know whether these are A=435 or A=440, because
I have yet to hear a recording of these chimes that I can know with
absolute certainty are played back at the same speed at which they were
recorded.

MS