or less degree. It quickened the attack of
the action and the speech of the pipes to an amazing extent and opened
a new and wider field to the King of Instruments.

In the year 1894 John Turnell Austin, now of Hartford, Conn., took out
a patent for an arrangement known as the "Universal air-chest." In
this, the spring as opposed to the weight is adopted. The Universal
air-chest forms a perfect solution of the problem of supplying prompt
and steady wind-pressure, but as practically the same effect is
obtained by the use of a little spring reservoir not one hundredth part
of its size, it is questionable whether this Universal air-chest,
carrying, as it does, certain disadvantages, will survive.

INDIVIDUAL PALLETS.

Fifty years ago the pallet and slider sound-board was well nigh
universally used, but several of the builders in Germany, and Roosevelt
in this country, strongly advocated, and introduced, chests having an
independent valve, pallet or membrane, to control the admission of wind
to each pipe in the organ.[1]

In almost all of these instances small round valves were used for this
purpose.

A good pallet and slider chest is difficult to make, and those
constructed by indifferent workmen out of indifferent lumber will cause
trouble through "running"--that is, leakage of wind from one pipe to
another. In poor chests of this description the slides are apt to
stick when the atmosphere is excessively damp, and to become too loose
on days when little or no humidity is present.

Individual pallet chests are cheaper to make and they have none of the
defects named above. Most of these chests, however, are subject to
troubles of their own, and not one of those in which round valves are
employed permits the pipes to speak to advantage.

Willis, Hope-Jones, Carlton C. Michell and other artists, after lengthy
tests, independently arrived at the conclusion that the best tonal
results cannot by any possibility be obtained from these cheap forms of
chest. Long pallets and a large and steady body of air below each pipe
are deemed essential.[2]

HEAVY WIND PRESSURES.

As previously stated, the vast majority of organs built fifty years ago
used no higher wind pressure than 3 inches. Hill, in 1833, placed a
Tuba stop voiced on about 11 inches in an organ he built for Birmingham
Town Hall (England), but the tone was so coarse and blatant that such
stops were for years employed only in the case of very large
buil