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Article ID: CBB178123492

The Notebook and the Laboratory – Types of Knowledge in German Piano-making, 1880–1930 (2019)

Petersen, Sonja (Author)

History and Technology
Volume: 35
Issue: 1
Pages: 58-80

DOI: 10.1080/07341512.2019.1608074

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2019.1608074

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Technology and music Laboratories Musical instruments Instrument makers Industrialization Crafts and craftspeople Tacit knowledge Classification of knowledge Notebooks Laboratory notebooks Pianos 20th century, early 19th century Germany Kurt Grotrian-Steinweg

Between the second half of the nineteenth century and the 1930s, German piano making changed from a craft to an industry. Nevertheless, piano makers still needed specific working knowledge to produce quality instruments. This knowledge was bound to individuals and transmitted informally from one person to another. The piano makers took working knowledge as the core of their practice. But in the shift to industrial methods of production, the key question was how to translate working knowledge into formal knowledge—to articulate what such knowledge meant and how it might be applied. Using the case study of the German piano making factory Grotrian-Steinweg, I show how the piano maker Kurt Grotrian used his notebooks to grapple with the problem of formalizing his working knowledge. At this company, an acoustic laboratory was established, in whose reports formalized knowledge was stored due to the transition of piano making from a craft to an industry.

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