Burney distinguishes Americus Backers by special mention. He is said to have been a Dutchman. Between 1772 and 1776, Backers produced the well-known English action, which has remained the most durable and one of the best up to the present day. It refers in direct leverage to Cristofori's first action. It is opposite to Stein's contemporary invention, which has the hopper fixed. In the English action, as in the Florentine, the hopper rises with the key. To the direct leverage of Cristofori's first action, Backers combined the check of the second, and then added an important invention of his own, a regulating screw and button for the escapement. Backers died in 1776. It is unfortunate we can refer to no pianoforte made by him. I should regard it as treasure trove if one were forthcoming in the same way that brought to light the authentic one of Stein's. As, however, Backers' intimate friends, and his assistants in carrying out the invention, were John Broadwood and Robert Stodart, we have, in their early instruments, the principle and all the leading features of the Backers grand. The increased weight of stringing was met by steel arches placed at intervals between the wrest-plank and the belly-rail, but the belly-rail was still free from the thrust of the wooden bracing, the direction of which was confined to the sides of the case, as it had been in the harpsichord. Stodart appears to have preceded Broadwood in taking up the manufacture of the grand piano by four or five years. In 1777 he patented an alternate pianoforte and harpsichord, the drawing of which patent shows the Backers action. The pedals he employed were to shift the harpsichord register and to bring on the octave stop. The present pedals were introduced in English and grand pianos by 1785, and are attributed to John Broadwood, who appears to have given his attention at once to the improvement of Backers' instrument. Hitherto the grand piano had been made with an undivided belly-bridge, the same as the harpsichord had been; the bass strings in three unisons, to the lowest note, being of brass. Theory would require that the notes of different octaves should be multiples of each other and that the tension should be the same for each string. The lowest bass strings, which at that time were the note F, would thus require a vibrating length of about twelve feet. As only half this length could be afforded, the difference had to be made up in the weight of the strings and their tension, which led, in these early grands, to many inequalities. The three octaves toward the treble could, with care, be adjusted, the lengths being practically the ideal lengths. It was in the bass octaves (pianos were then of five octaves) the inequalities were more conspicuous. To make a more perfect scale and equalize the tension was the merit and achievement of John Broadwood, who joined to his own practical knowledge and sound intuitions the aid of professed men of science.