G'day,

squeezeme: In writing:

"Hmmm ... I should go and look at the reference sites before relying on what I laughingly call my memory!"

I wasn't fending off any perceived criticism from you ... just telling myself that I need to be more careful with details (as well as "dates" and "facts" long-held in the alleged study of old concertinas! (Now, where did I leave that jar of Gingko Biloba ... and what was I taking it for ... ?)

I glossed the PICA article, late last night, but it warrants more deliberate reading. It really does upset a lot of misconceptions that are bandied back and forth between owners who perceive their concertina to be handed down from Mt Sinai ... while your concertina is merely the work of the devil incarnate... I was picking up some of this from the concertina.com (Concertina Library) site, but the PICA article has well researched property documentation - as just as one example - that clears up lots of details.

Foolestroupe: "Because the buttons were easier to build, until someone realised that the keyboard would be easier to play?" Interestingly, The Chambers Concertina and related instrument collection (found at The Concertina Library) has images of an early Daniam-made accordion (the ancestral button accordion) and another near-contemporary Viennese accordion - and both have small rectangular keys, rather than buttons ... looking like small piano keys, but lacking "black notes". I suspect the shift to buttons for the diatonic accordion ... and then for its development into Uhlig's Konzertina ... had more to do with fitting the best keying layout into the least possible space ... and, maybe, the Germans were looking carefully at early the London-made concertinas that Wheatstone was still developing.

Regards,

Bob