Re: [Harp-L] Theory, etc. - history of positions

[Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx>]

I took 34.5 million, tossed out the women, girls and very small boys  
and estimate 10.33 million males that could have had a harmonica.
I divided this by 2,200 (10% of Hohner's production-a fair estimate)  
and that comes to 1 harmonica for every 4,697 males of harmonica   
bearing age. I stand on my feeling that a harmonica from 1882, 1905  
or even 1928 could be buried and look ancient by now. I also feel  
that the one from 1928 would be 'noticably' more modern looking.

I don't feel that purveyors of Civil War relics do what furniture  
'distressers' do. That is: add worm holes, beat the furniture with  
chains and apply all sorts of mysterious oriental finishes in order  
to make their stuff look old. Aging Civil War relics would take a  
long time and I don't think they have that luxury. What I DO think is  
that (some) find junk and try to enhance their position by  
representing it as something that it isn't.

Sort of like Joran VanDerSloot purporting to be Anna Nicole's baby's  
daddy.  :)

smokey-joe


On Feb 23, 2007, at 1:42 PM, Winslow Yerxa wrote:

> INteresting, that 22,000 figure. Higher than I would have thought, but
> note also that it is postwar, the same year that Hohner started
> commercial exportation to the U.S.
>
> Again, *if* all 22,000 harps had come to the U.S. between 1860 and
> 1864, and *if* they had all ended up in the hands of Civil War
> soldiers, that would have brought the ratio down to one for every 160
> or so soldiers.
>
> WInslow
>
> --- Frank Evers <frank@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Am Freitag, 23. Februar 2007 15:52 schrieb David Coulson:
> > > In Winslow's  response to Iceman's posting he states that the
> > > popular image of harmonica playing in the Civil War was the
> > > creation of Hollywood screen writers, and that harmonica production
> > > was too low until the 1870s or 1880s for the instrument to have
> > > been widespread. However, in the Alan Bates collection site he
> > > links to in the same response, it says this: "First imported in
> > > quantity in the early 1860s, they (harmonicas) became popular with
> > > soldiers from both north and south.  Many harmonica remains have
> > > been found around Civil War camp sites."
> > > So which is correct?
> >
> > Hohner (which was afaik the first company to export harmonicas to
> > America) started regular exports in 1865. According to Klaus Rohwer´s
> >
> > website (http://www.klausrohwer.de/privat/hobbies/muha/geschi.htm)
> > Hohners whole production in 1867 was 22000 harmonicas.
> > Even if most of them were shipped overseas that´d probably not enough
> >
> > to to equip whole armies.
> > Actually they had their market in europe too, so think it was in fact
> >
> > only a smaller fraction of their production that was exported.
> >
> > However i have no idea if any harmonicas were produced within America
> >
> > at that time.
> >
> > --
> > Gruß,Frank
> >
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>
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