Squeezeboxes: Names and Brands

How did the Accordion get its name?
Squeezebox Names Around the World
List of Brands & Models

How did the accordion get its name?

Here are some excerpts from the Squeezebox Newsgroup on this subject.
Please note - the dates are not mine, I am merely passing on what was written by others. (Special thanks to Gary Blair for most of the historical information.)

In Italy "accordo" is the word for "chord"...

It was due to the work of the abbe Georg Josef Vogler (1749-1814), during his many travels through Europe, that the principle of the free reed became widespread. This knowledge led to the great spate of experimentation and development of varying types of instrument utilizing the free-reed principle as the means of tone-production during the early part of the 19th century.

The earliest instrument appears to have been the Aeolidicon, constructed in 1800 by J. T. Eschenbach of Hamburg, which was a bellows-blown keyboard instrument with free reeds. This was followed by numerous other free reed instruments, all with exotic names: Melodeon, Aerophone (pictured to right), Physharmonica, Uranion, Terpodion, Organo-Violine, Aeoline, Melophone, Orgue-Expressif, Seraphine, etc.

They varied in size and shape, from foot-bellows blown to hand-bellows blown, sometimes with wooden reeds vibrated by a metal roller or vice versa, some purely melodic to be attached to and used with a Pianoforte, and from this assortment eventually emerged the foot-blown Harmonium or Reed Organ, the hand-operated Accordion and Concertina, and the mouth-blown Harmonica or Mouth-Organ.

The prototype of the two latter instruments were undoubtedly the work of Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann (1805-1864) son of the maker of the "Terpodion". In 1821 he constructed a small mouth-blown instrument of 15 reeds as an aid to tuning. He discovered that the free-reeds could be played both soft and loud without affecting the pitch of the sound, and he proceeded to make an improved model, called the "Aura", which he described in a letter in 1828 as being suitable for melodic playing accompanied by the Terpodion. This instrument was undoubtedly the original of the Mouthorgan or Harmonica.

Further experimentation led to the addition of a weighted bellows, which would allow the instrument to sound without further handling, a necessary adjunct for the tuner of instruments.
In 1822 he constructed a further instrument on these lines, with hand operated bellows, adding valves to aid compression, and fitting buttons to operate the reeds. This was the "Hand-Aeoline", which was really the first prototype of the Accordion, which Buschmann himself called "Konzertina".

At this time the patent and copyright laws were rather lax, and new names were a means of identifying a particular maker or inventor, even if the "improvement" was literally "borrowed" from another inventor...

...Cyril Demian patented the "Accordion" in 1829. It had bass chords, and it even had registers already: if I understood it correctly, the descant buttons would sound either one or four reeds. (i.e. three reeds could be deselected by a mute). Whether Demian was the inventor of the accordion or Buschmann, depends on whether you would call Buschmann's "Hand-Aeoline" (1821) an accordion...

This was just after Charles Wheatstone got his patent for the "symphonium", the forerunner to the English system concertina.

...Concerning having fixed chords: Pierre Monichon remarked that by that account, free bass accordions should not be called accordion...

---

Squeezebox Names Around the World

The Golden Encyclopedia of Music by Norman Lloyd describes the accordion as "an organlike piece of furniture dear to the Victorians". In the US, it is sometimes humorously referred to as the Pleated Piano, Stomach Steinway, Waistline Wurlitzer, or Belly Baldwin. In France, it is called the piano with suspenders.

The concertina has been called the Concert Screamer, or Constant Screamer.

Accordion to Pete Nalda, Huddie Ledbetter called his one row button accordion a "Windjammer".

The humble squeezebox, known in almost every culture around the world, has more names than just about any other instrument. Below is a list I have been collecting.

If you have any new contributions I wish you would email them to me. I pretty much stopped adding to this page in November of 1997, but further additions will appear in my book, the Pretty Complete Guide to Squeezeboxes.

The List of Squeezebox Names

• Accordeon / akkordeon
• Accordion / (and the common but dreadful misspelling: accordian)
• Acordeao (Portuguese)
• Acordeon (Spanish)
• Anglo Concertina (Anglo-German, Anglo-Chromatic)
• Armonica /armonika
• Bandoneon
• Bayan / bajan (Russian)
• Bosca Ceol (Irish, lit. "music box")
• Box
• Button Box, Button Accordion
• Buzika
• Chemnitzer Concertina
• Concertina
• Dragspel / dragspil (Swedish, lit. "pull-play")
• Duet Concertina
• English Concertina
• Fisarmonica (Italian)
• Garmonika / garmonik (Russian, Belarus)
• Garmoshka (variant of Garmonika)
• German Concertina
• Gombos harmonika
• Handklaver (Sweden - lit. "hand-piano")
• Hanuri (Finnish)
• Harmonieflute
• Harmonika / harmonikka / harmonijka / harmonica (widespread European term for accordion)
• Klavier-harmonika
• Konzertina
• Lindanda
• Lootspill
• Mello-Piano (Australia)
• Melodeon
• Monika (short for Harmonika, common in the Netherlands)
• Organetto
• Pedalowka
• Piano Accordion
• Polka Box
• Realejo
• Sanfona
• Schwyzerorgeli
• Squashbox (South African diatonic concertina)
• Squeezebox
• Steirisch
• Sun Fin Chin (Chinese)
• Taljanka (Russian for 1-row box)
• 'Tina (short for concertina)
• Transichord
• Trekharmonika (Dutch, lit. "pull-harmonika)
• Trekspil /trekkspil / trekkspill (Norwegian, lit. "push-play")
• Trekzak
• Zieharmonika (German, lit. "pull-harmonika")

Belgium seems to win the prize for most creative names, and largest number of them. The following list was submitted by Jan Doumen (jqdoumen@imol2.vub.ac.be):

• Harmonica
• Harmonéon
• Trekzak (pull-bag)
• Trek
• Trekorgel
• Trekbuul
• Trekker
• rekorgel
• open en toe
• knieharmonika (knee-harmonica)
• boure-èt-r'boute (from bourer = push and satchî = pull) or
• satche-êt-r'boute
• tièsse di tchfau (tête de cheval = head of the horse)
• armon'rèye à pleus (harmonic with folds)
• piano des pauvres (piano of the poor)
• piano a bretelles
• tire-tire-pouse-pouse (pull-pull-push-push)
• serinette
• quätskommode (quätschen = to press together; kommode = cupboard)

For more names, and pictures to go along with them, see:

Reference Book on Harmonicas (Accordions) - Dr Alfred Mirek. Text in Russian; English translation on facing page. History, B&W drawings, classification and descriptions of all sorts of squeezeboxes, especially early squeezeboxes and Russian instruments, with historical information on the makers.

Other useful reference books:

The Pretty Complete Guide to Squeezeboxes

Accordion Repairs Made Easy - contains many keyboard charts