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My 1883 Groves reads (pp.231-232) SAX, Charles Joseph, a Belgian musical-instrument maker of the first rank, born in Dinant in Belgium, Feb 1, 1791, died in Paris, April 26, 1865. He was first a cabinet-maker, then a mechanic, in a spinning-machine faotory, and then set up in Brussels as a maker of wind instruments. He had served no apprenticeship to the trade, and his only qualification was that he could play the serpent; he was therefore obliged to investigate for himself the laws concerning the bore of instruments; but as he had great manual dexterity, and a turn of invention, he was soon able to produce serpents and flutes of fair quality. He quickly attracted notice by his clarinets and bassoons, which gained him a medal at the Industrial Exhibition of 1820, and the title of musical-instrument maker to the court of the Netherlands, who also encouraged him by advancing him capital. In 1822 he he began to make all kinds of wind-instruments, brass and wood, and in 1824 invented an "omnitone horn" which he continued to perfect until 1846. This instrument can be adjusted to any key by means of a piston sliding backwards or forwards on a graduated scale of about half an inch long, which sets the body of the instrument in communication with tubes of different lengths corresponding to all the major keys. On a separate elbow is a movable register which the player fixes opposite the number of the key he wishes to use, and the tube of that key being at once brought into position, the instrument is played exactly like an ordinary horn. Sax also invented brass instruments producing every note in the scale, without crooks, pistons or cylinders. He took out patents for a keyed harp, and a piano and a guitar on a new system, but his efforts were mainly directed to perfecting the clarinet, especially the bass clarinet, and discovering new methods of boring brass and wood wind-instruments with a view to make them more exactly in tune. His exertions were crowned with success, and he obtained gratifying distinctions at the Brussels Industrial Exhibition of 1935. Charles was the father of 11 children, of whom two sons were distinguished in the same line. There follow articles on the eldest, Antoine Joseph known as Adolph, and his brother Alphonse, the former an even longer article describing the saxophone among other instruments.
