GUEST-01.51 - MY understanding is that the four string tenor banjo was
introduced in the eighteen nineties so that the Viola player in a string quartet could play a banjo without learning a totally new technique because the string quartets were losing out on Gigs because everybody wanted to book banjo bands . That from the Old Guy who ran the Clifford Essex shop in the nineteen sixties , when i took my Temlett 7 string in for some info on tuning (as well as a new vellum)