Robert Holford Macdowall Bosanquet

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Bosanquet's generalized keyboard

Robert Holford Macdowall Bosanquet (1841-1913) was an English scientist and music theorist, brother of the philosopher Bernard Bosanquet. He worked in the area of music and musical acoustics, astronomy, the history of astronomy and electromagnetism. He developed classes for musical tunings that simplified mapping to a symmetrical arrangement he called a generalized keyboard. T. A. Jennings applied Bosanquet's keyboard to a harmonium tuned in 53 equal temperament using 84 keys in each octave.

[edit] References

Obituary. (1913) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, volume 73, page 203
Helmholtz, L. F., and Ellis, Alexander, On the Sensations of Tone, second English edition, Dover Publications
On the Theory of the Division of the Octave. (1874) Journal of the Royal Musical Association.
Allan, R. J. Enharmonic Harmonium. The Free-Reed Organ in England. (2004)

The famous Janko keyboard first patented in 1883 was a 12-tone generalized keyboard