This epoch-making invention, introduced in 1832, rendered possible extraordinary developments. It was at first strangely ignored and opposed. The English organ-builders refused to take it up. Barker was at length driven to France, where, in the person of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, he found a more far-seeing man.
After Cavaillé-Coll had fully demonstrated the practical value of Barker's invention, Willis and others joined in its development, and they contemporaneously overcame all difficulties and brought the pneumatic action into general favor.
This process, of course, took time, and up to about fifty years ago pneumatic action was found only in a few organs of large calibre.
The recent revolution in organ building and in organ tone, of which this book treats, was founded upon the pneumatic and electro-pneumatic actions invented by Barker.[2]
It is safe to say that the art of organ building has advanced more during the last fifty years than in any previous three centuries. We are literally correct in saying that a veritable revolution has already been effected—and the end is not yet.
As leaders in this revolutionary movement, three names stand out with startling prominence—Henry Willis, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll and Robert Hope-Jones.
Others have made contributions to detail (notably Hilborne L. Roosevelt), but it is due to the genius, the inventions and the work of those three great men that the modern organ stands where it does to-day.
We propose:
1. To enumerate and describe the inventions and improvements that have so entirely transformed the instrument;
2. To trace the progress of the revolution in our own country; and,