author
William Braid White
1878–1959
Best remembered for making the inner workings of the piano understandable, this American writer and technician helped turn a specialized craft into something teachable. His books on tuning, construction, and player pianos became lasting reference works for generations of technicians.
1 Audiobook
Theory and Practice of Piano Construction With a Detailed, Practical Method for Tuning
by William Braid White
About the author
Born in 1878 and active in Chicago, William Braid White wrote extensively about piano tuning, piano construction, and player-piano mechanisms. Listings from the Online Books Page show a substantial body of work under his name, including Modern Piano Tuning and Allied Arts, Piano Playing Mechanisms, and The Player-Pianist, while Project Gutenberg preserves Theory and Practice of Piano Construction as one of his notable technical books.
White was also an organizer as well as an author. The Piano Technicians Guild credits him as one of the four founders of the American Guild of Piano Tuners in 1910, an important step in the professional organization of piano technicians in the United States. The Guild Foundation also notes that his personal library was important enough to be preserved after his death.
A Loyola University Chicago finding aid for his papers adds another interesting side to his life: beyond piano technology, he also pursued astronomy, leaving observation logs and related notes. He died in 1959, but his writing continued to circulate long after, especially among readers interested in how pianos are built, tuned, and maintained.