| W. Lee Vinson, percussion |
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The Innovations of Harry A. Bower
Harry A. Bower is perhaps best known as having authored The Harry A. Bower System (in three parts) for the Drums, Bells, Xylophone, Timpani, first published in 1911, and the Imperial Method for the Drum in 1898. Bower’s methods were revolutionary at the time in that they treated the bells, xylophone, and timpani as equals alongside the snare drum. Previous drum methods focused almost exclusively on the military tradition of rudimental drumming with no attention paid to timpani or mallet percussion.
Bower was an active performer in Boston at the turn of the 20th Century. While he was a member of the Boston Symphony from 1904 through 1907, listed in programs as the cymbal player actually, his main engagements were of the vaudeville variety most notably with the Tremont Theater Orchestra. The music scene in Boston was thriving in the early 1900s and freelance work for a man of Bower’s talents would have been easy to come by. |
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Bower was also a prolific inventor. He boasts no fewer than thirteen patents for ideas ranging from timpani tuning devices to control mechanisms for a vibraharp and from bass drum and cymbal beaters to a heating and illuminating attachment for gas burners. Bower apparently had an idea of how to improve just about everything, but especially the snare drum. Of Bowers patents, seven of them involve specifically the snare drum.
Drums from the early 1900s are generally unusual by modern standards in that nothing about the instrument had been standardized yet. The variety of instruments available from manufactures across the United States, mainly in the Northeast (George B. Stone, F. E. Dodge, etc.) and Midwest (Duplex, Leedy and then Ludwig & Ludwig), was impressive if not daunting. Drum makers were still experimenting with many aspects of the instruments function and construction including shell size, snare strainers and throw-offs, and methods of tensioning the heads. Even though separate tension lugs had been patented by Emil Boulanger of the Duplex Manufacturing Company in 1883, the concept was slow to catch on. |
Harry A. Bower 1903 Patent Illustration |
It was in this era of experimentation and innovation that Harry Bower applied for his first patent pertaining to snare drum construction in 1903. The distinguishing feature of this patent was the snare throw-off which provided a “means for holding the snares on the drum-head in such manner that the said snares may be accurately adjusted, first, as to their pressure upon the head, and, second, as to their tension, so that the pressure may be increased or decreased independently of the tension and the tension may be increased or decreased independently of the adjustment of the snares toward and from the head”. While simple in design, this was basically a snare throw-off which attempted to allow for separate tension of the snares both across the head and against the head. Keep in mind that this was fifteen years prior to Robert Danly’s patented throw-off, better known as Ludwig’s ‘Pioneer’ throw-off, and twenty-five years before Bill Ludwig’s parallel ‘Supersensitive’ throw-off both of which would set the standard for decades to come. |
| After selling his snare drum design and two other patents to Boston drum builder F. E. Dodge, Bower seems to have taken a break from patenting his inventions for the next decade or so. When he reappeared in the patent registry, however, he returned with a flurry of new ideas. Between 1916 and 1919 he applied for and was granted three new patents for snare drums. By 1919 he introduced to the market his crowning manufacturing achievement, the Bower Drum. His new drums were modestly billed as “the greatest drum of the age” and “a new creation. Invented and manufactured by the World’s leading authority on drums and drumming, and the author and publisher of the Harry A. Bower System”. |
| Bower Drums are fascinating instruments in many respects. They were both ahead of and behind their own time in terms of their design. The most recognizable feature of these drums is their oversized hoops that serve as both flesh hoops for the calf skin heads and counter hoops for providing tension to the heads. The concept behind this design was that by having an extended collar which reached far past the shells bearing edge, additional head resonance could be achieved. These were single tension drums however and despite having the convenience of tensioning both heads simultaneously, there was no way of tensioning the top and bottom heads independently. |
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The most forward thinking components of the Bower Drum were the shell design and the snare system. Many of the Bower drums produced employed shells made from an unusual Leatheroid composite material formed by chemically treating cellulose. In an age where other manufacturer s offered only wooden and metal shells, this was a distinctly different option available only from Bower’s drums. The snare system was also highly unique for its time in 1919. The best comparison is to the Rogers Dyna-Sonic snare drums from the 1960s where the snare wires remained tensioned from side to side on a mounted frame while the strainer controlled the tension against the heads as well as engaged and disengaged the snares from the drum. In Bower’s words this eliminated the need for “the ‘old fashioned’ Snare Bed commonly used, thereby eliminating all snare difficulties and annoyances.”
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