f importance influencing the technique of stringed
instruments was the attempt to find some device for controlling the
tension of the hair. The contrivance known as _cremaillere_, which was
the first step in this direction, seems to have been foreshadowed in the
bows drawn in a quaint MS. of the 14th century in the British Museum
(Sloane 3983, fol. 43 and 13) on astronomy. Forming an obtuse angle with
the handle of the bow is a contrivance shaped like a spear-head which
presumably served some useful purpose; if it had notches (which would be
too small to show in the drawing), and the hair of the bow was finished
with a loop, then we have here an early example of a device for
controlling the tension. Another bow in the same MS. has two round knobs
on the stick which may be assumed to have served the same purpose.

[Illustriation: Drawn from bows the property of William E. Hill & Sons.

FIG. 2.--A, B, Tartini Bows; C, Tourte Bow.]

A very early example of the _cremaillere_ bow (fig. 1) occurs on a
carved ivory plate ornamenting the binding of the fine Carolingian MS.
Psalter of Lothair (A.D. 825), for some time known as the Ellis and
White Psalter, but now in the library of Sir Thomas Brooke at Armitage
Bridge House. The carved figure of King David, assigned from its
characteristic pose and the treatment of the drapery to the 11th
century, holds a stringed instrument, a rotta of peculiar shape, which
occurs twice in other Carolingian MSS.[15] of the 9th century, but
copied here without understanding, as though it were a lyre with many
strings. The artist has added a bow with _cremaillere_ attachment,
which is startling if the carving be accurately placed in the 11th
century. The earliest representation of a _cremaillere_ bow, with this
exception, dates from the 15th century, according to Viollet-le-Duc, who
merely states that it was copied from a painting.[16] Fetis (op. cit. p.
117) figures a _cremaillere_ bow which he styles "Bassani, 1680."
Sebastian Virdung draws a bow for a _tromba marina_, with the hair and
stick bound together with waxed cord. The hair appears to be kept more
or less tense by means of a wedge of wood or other material forced in
between stick and hair, the latter bulging slightly at this point like
the string of an archery bow when the arrow is in position; this
contrivance may be due to the fancy of the artist.

The invention of a movable nut propelled by a screw is ascribed to the
elder Tourte