CHAPTER IV.
PNEUMATIC AND ELECTRO-PNEUMATIC ACTIONS.
Undoubtedly the first improvements to be named must be the pneumatic and electro-pneumatic actions.
Without the use of these actions most of the advances we are about to chronicle would not have been effected.
As before stated, Cavaillé-Coll and Willis worked as pioneers in perfecting and in introducing the pneumatic action.
The pneumatic action used by Willis, Cavaillé-Coll and a score of other builders leaves little to be desired. It is thoroughly reliable and, where the keys are located close by the organ, is fairly prompt both in attack and repetition. Many of the pneumatic actions made to-day, however, are disappointing in these particulars.
TUBULAR PNEUMATICS.[1]
In the year 1872 Henry Willis built an organ for St. Paul's Cathedral, London, which was divided in two portions, one on each side of the junction of the Choir with the Dome at an elevation of about thirty feet from the floor. The keyboards were placed inside one portion of the instrument, and instead of carrying trackers down and under the floor and up to the other side, as had hitherto been the custom in such cases, he made the connection by means of tubes like gaspipes, and made a pulse of wind travel down and across and up and into the pneumatic levers controlling the pipes and stops. Sir John Stainer describes it as "a triumph of mechanical skill." He was organist of St. Paul's for many years and ought to know. This was all very well for a cathedral, where
". . . . the long-drawn aisles
The melodious strains prolong"