ERARD, Sébastien (1752-1831), a manufacturer of musical instruments, distinguished especially for the improvements he made upon the harp and the pianoforte, was born at Strasburg on the 4th April 1752. While a boy he showed great aptitude for practical geometry and architectural drawing, and in the workshop of his father, who was an upholsterer, he found opportunity for the early exercise of his mechanical ingenuity. When lie was sixteen his father died, and he removed to Paris where he obtained employment with a harpsichord maker. Here his remarkable constructive skill, while it speedily excited the jealousy of his master and procured his dismissal, almost equally soon attracted the notice of musicians and musical instrument makers of eminence. Before he was twenty-five he set up in business for himself, his first workshop being a room in the hotel of the Duchesse de Villeroi, who gave him warm encouragement. Under her roof he constructed in 1780 his first pianoforte, which was also one of the first manufactured in France, the instruments used previous to that period in the houses of the Paris nobility having been imported from Germany and England. When heard in the salon of his patroness, it quickly secured for its maker such a reputation that he was soon overwhelmed with commissions. Finding assistance necessary, he sent for his brother, Jean Baptiste, in conjunction with whom he established in the Rue de Bourbon in the Faubourg St Germain a piano manufactory, which in a few years became one of the most celebrated in Europe. On the outbreak of the Revolution he proceeded to London, where he established a factory similar to that in Paris. Returning to the French capital in 1796, he introduced soon afterwards grand pianofortes, made in the English fashion, with ...