Roman Mars

This is 99% Invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

I want you to imagine a world where you can just invent a musical instrument.

I don't mean when you were a kid and you put some rubber bands on a tissue box.

I mean you come up with a new instrument almost from scratch and then watch as that instrument gets taken up and played in nearly every marching band, jazz band, and high school music classroom across the country.

This is when many of the instruments we know today reached their modern forms.

Trumpets had been around since Roman times, but in the 19th century, they took on the valved form we know today.

And flutes went from being conical wooden instruments to metal cylinders.

Its design came from the mind of a brash young entrepreneur.

Adolphe Saxe was born in Dinant, Belgium in 1814.

This is Dr. Stephen Cottrell, Emeritus Professor of Music at City St.

George's University of London.

Dr. Cottrell is the author of a book called The Saxophone.

But that book might never have been written because Sax nearly died before he invented anything.

Like many, many times.

Some of these stories might be apocryphal, but this long list of mishaps is probably why his mother once said that, quote, he's a child condemned to misfortune.

He won't live.

Thanks, Mom.

Adolphe's father, Charles Joseph Saxe, had gotten into instrument making because he was a musician himself.

His professional training had been as a carpenter, but when he joined a woodwind band in Dinant, he didn't have an instrument, so he taught himself to make one.