1851 Great Exhibition: Official Catalogue: Class X.: W. Hill and Co
556. HILL, W., and Co., Tottenham Court Road — Designers and Manufacturers.
Finger organ with two sets of channels; compass from CC to F, with separate sound-boards on extra pressure of wind, containing a reed stop of great power, separate pedal sound-board of two octaves and a half from CCC; the whole of the channels placed in a swell box; the composition and drawing of the stops being on a new principle.
[The sound-board of an organ is the upper part of the wind chest in which the mouths of the pipes are inserted, and, by the removal of a small valve, sounded. The manuals are the stops played by the hand: the term also is synonymous with hey-board. Pedals were invented by a German, called Bernhard, about 1400. The swell was invented by an Englishman, in the last century, the idea having been suggested, it is said, by the modified intensity of sound from a pianoforte, produced by the opening and closing of the door of a room in which it was played. The channels convey the wind to the pipes.—H. E. D.]