Papers communicated to learned societies generally deal with the results of investigation into some little understood subject of historical interest. It is not often possible to carry that subject up to modern times and to discuss its present-day implications. That, however, is what I am able to do this evening. I have chosen to take the last years of the early keyboard instruments as my starting point, to draw attention to activities relating to them during the nineteenth century, and to outline the circumstances in which the manufacture of the harpsichord and clavichord began once more towards the end of that century. That will bring us to a date some sixty years ago, and I think that is far enough back to enable one to place those happenings in an historical perspective.