Don't go breaking the Treaty of Versailles now!
https://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versa/versa9.html
art. 282
(22) Convention of November 16 and 19, 1885, regarding the establishment of a concert pitch.
https://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versa/versa9.html
art. 282
(22) Convention of November 16 and 19, 1885, regarding the establishment of a concert pitch.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-8...
They say that after Versailles:
> London’s Royal Philharmonic Society would still tune higher to about 439 Hz though. This was because the mandate specified that Concert A should be 435 Hz according to a tuning fork of a specific weight at 15 degrees Celsius. The temperature was specified so that the metal tuning fork could be accurately reproduced, but British orchestras reasoned that their concert halls were warmer than that, and so to compensate they would tune higher.
I wonder if they tested their assumption with a conformant tuning fork.
> The declarations of the International Conference on Concert Pitch convened by the Austrian Ministerium des Kultus und Unterricht at Vienna, November 16-19, 1885 were published by that ministry and are also in Italy, Ministro degli affari esteri, Trattati e convenzioni tra il regno d’Italia e gli altri stati, xii, 727.
[0] https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv...