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  1. A few weeks ago chromaduet asked some questions about the patent of Louis Douce of Paris. Could this patent have influenced Charles Wheatstone's manufacturing of unisonoric double action concertina's? In the years 1840-1842 Douce asked for, and got, 6 patents (one original and 5 additions) on his free reed instrument with bellows, which he called 'harmonieux'. Now I doubt if you could call this instrument unisonoric. That word seems to imply keys with pairs of reeds of the same pitch. But Douce used only one reed for each key, by constructing a pair of bellows producing only pressure, not suction. They were positioned on both sides of the keyboard, and connected in such a way that one always opened when the other was being shut. Automatic valves saw to it, that neither of them could suck air out of the box containing the reeds, only blow air into it. As there was only one reed per key, you could call it 'monosonoric', rather than 'unisonoric'. The only exception is the so-called 'harmonie': the simple accompaniment with only Tonic and Dominant (bass and chord) in C major. That was still bisonoric (2 keys) in the first version, and became unisonoric (4 keys) from the second one on. I cannot imagine that Douce's rather amateuristic approach to 'abolish the disadvantages of bisonority' could have influenced Charles Wheatstone's much more professional development of the English concertina. Besides, I think that Wheatstone introduced his 'double action', including unisonority, much earlier than November 1840. Does anybody know for certain, for that matter, when this principle was applied for the first time by Wheatstone? The keyboard layout of Douce's instrument was clearly developed from that of the then existing French 'accordéon'. Essentially each of the two rows of that design was doubled: one for the notes originally available on opening the bellows. the other for those on shutting them, so there were 4 rows in total. This has, as far as I can see, no link whatsoever with the later C-Griff and B-Griff types of the unisonoric chromatic button accordion, and still less, if possible, with the piano keyboard system of Matthäus Bauer, although Douce in his last 'addition' of 1842 says that the button system can be replaced with a piano keyboard. I doubt very much if Bauer could have known this.
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