Oscar Schmidt Company

Oscar Schmidt International (formerly Oscar Schmidt Company), is a division of U.S. Music Corporation, the owners of the ‘Autoharp’ trademark that was registered in 1926. U.S. Music Corporation is based in Illinois, and manufactures and distributes musical instruments under a number of names, including Washburn Guitars, Randall Amplifiers, and Soundtech. In addition to Autoharps, the Oscar Schmidt Company also produces harps, guitars, zithers, banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles. The Oscar Schmidt Company was formed in 1871 and incorporated in 1911 by brothers Oscar and Otto Schmidt, who had settled in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. By the 1920s, at the height of the company’s production, they were managing five factories throughout Europe in addition to their home factory at 87 Ferry Street in Jersey City. Between the 1880s and the 1960s, Oscar Schmidt Company instruments were distributed primarily throughout lesser-populated and rural areas of the United States, often through door-to-door sales tactics, and were in common use by local musicians. The company’s salesmen marketed their instruments to a specific demographic, namely those who required portable and durable instruments that could be easily learned and used in popular social occasions. A particularly unique sales method employed by the company’s salesmen involved marketing “special edition” instruments to coincide with an important event, even including accompanying commemorative dedications on the instrument and sheet music written specifically for the event. Despite their being inexpensive and easily accessible to non-professionals, the company’s instruments are regarded for being of good quality and tone. The origin of the Autoharp itself is not well documented. The idea for the instrument is generally understood to have been developed by Charles Zimmermann, a German-born instrument builder residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA who received a US patent in 1882 for an instrument that featured a mechanism allowing it to mute certain strings. Zimmermann’s design was given the name ‘autoharp’, but employed a more symmetrical shape and damper bars that were activated via horizontal and not vertical movements. A later version of the instrument, called the Volkszither or “people’s zither” was patented in 1883 by the German instrument builder Karl Gütter and is commonly regarded as the first true iteration of the modern Autoharp.