[1] Ezra Cornell (1807-1874) was born in Westchester county, New
York, on the 11th of January 1807. His parents were Quakers from
Massachusetts. He received a scanty education; worked as a carpenter
in Syracuse and as a machinist in Ithaca; became interested (about
1842) in the development of the electric telegraph; and after
unsuccessful or over-expensive attempts to ground the telegraph wires
in 1844 solved the difficulty by stringing them on poles. He
organized many telegraph construction companies, was one of the
founders of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and accumulated a
large fortune. He was a delegate to the first national convention of
the Republican party (1856) and was a member of the New York assembly
in 1862-1863 and of the state senate in 1864-1867. He founded a
public library (dedicated in 1866) in Ithaca, and died there on the
9th of December 1874. Consult Alonzo B. Cornell, _True and Firm: A
Biography of Ezra Cornell_ (New York, 1884).
[2] New York's share amounted to 990,000 acres. The Morrill Act
prescribed that the proceeds from the sale of this land should not be
used for the purchase, erection or maintenance of any building or
buildings.
[3] He had previously--in 1865--bought scrip for 100,000 acres for
$50,000, on the understanding that all profits which might accrue
from the sale of the land should be paid to the university.
CORNET, a word having two distinct significations and two etymological
histories, both, however, ultimately referable to the same Latin
origin:--
1. (Fr. _cornette_, dim. of _corne_, from Lat. _cornu_, a horn), a small
standard, formerly carried by a troop of cavalry, and similar to the
pennon in form, narrowing gradually to a point. The term was then
applied to the body of cavalry which carried a cornet. In this sense it
is used in the military literature of the 16th century and, less
frequently, in that of the 17th. Before the close of the 16th century,
however, the world had also come to mean a junior officer of a troop of
cavalry who, like the "ensign" of foot, carried the colour. The spelling
"coronet" occurs in the 16th century, and has perhaps contributed to
obscure the derivation of "colonel" or "coronel." The rank of "cornet"
remained in the British cavalry until the general adoption of the term
"second lieutenant." In the Boer republics "field-cornets" were local
subordinate officers of the commando (q.v.), the unit of the military
forces. Elected for three years by the wards into which the electoral
districts were divided, they had administrative as well as military
duties, and acted as magistrates, inspectors of natives and registration
officers for their respective wards. In 1907, the "field-cornet" system
was re-established in the Transvaal; the new duties of the
"field-cornets" are those performed by assistant magistrates, viz. petty
jurisdiction, registration of voters, births and deaths, the carrying
out of regulations as to animal diseases, and maintenance of roads. The
"field-cornets" are appointed by government for three years.
2. (Fr. _cornet_, Ital. _cornetto_, Med. Lat. _cornetum_, a bugle, from
Lat. _cornu_, a horn), in music, the name of two varieties of wind
instruments (see below), and also of certain stops of the organ. The
great organ "solo cornet" was a mixture or compound stop, having either
5, 4, or 3 ranges of pipes; occasionally it was placed on a separate
soundboard, when it was known as a "mounted cornet." The "echo cornet"
was a similar stop, but softer and enclosed in a box. In German and
Dutch organs the term cornet is sometimes applied to a pedal reed stop.
(a) CORNET or CORNETT (Fr. _cornet_, _cornet a bouquin_; Ger. _Zinck_,
_Zincken_; Ital. _cornetto_) is the name given to a family of wood wind
instruments, now obsolete, having a cup-shaped mouthpiece and a conical
bore without a bell, and differing entirely from the modern cornet a
pistons. The old cornets were of two kinds, the straight and the curved,
characterized by radical differences in construction. There were two
very different kinds of straight cornets (Ger. _gerader Zinck_, Ital.
_cornetto diretto_ or _recto_), the one most commonly used having a
detachable cup-shaped mouthpiece similar to that of the trumpet, while
the other was made to all appearance without mouthpiece, there being not
even a moulded rim at the end of the tube to break the rigid straight
line. Examination of the tube, however, reveals the secret of the
characteristic sweet tone of this latter kind of cornet; unsuspected
inside the top of the tube is cut out of the thickness of the wood a
mouthpiece, not cup-shaped, but like a funnel similar to that of the
French horn, which merges gradually into the bore of the instrument.
This mode of construction, together with the narrower bore adopted,
greatly influenced the timbre of the instrument, whose softer tone was
thus due mainly to the substitution of the funnel for the sharp angle of
incidence at the bottom of the cup mouthpiece known as the throat (see
MOUTHPIECE), where it communicates with the tube. It is this sharp
angle, which in the other cornets with detachable mouthpiece, causes the
column of air to break, producing a shrill quality of tone, while the
wider bore and slightly rough walls of the tube account for the
harshness. In Germany the sweet-toned cornet was known as _stiller_ or
_sanfter Zinck_, and in Italy as _cornetto muto_ (fig. 1), while in
France the instruments with detachable mouthpiece were distinguished by
the addition of _a bouquin_ (= with mouthpiece). The curved cornet (Ger.
_krummer Zinck_ or _Stadtkalb_; Ital. _cornetto curvo_) could not for
obvious reasons have the bore pierced through a single piece of wood;
the channel for the vibrating column of air was, therefore, hollowed out
of two pieces of wood, the diameter increasing from the mouthpiece to
the lower end. The two pieces of wood thus prepared were joined together
with glue and covered with leather, the outer surface of the tube being
finished off in octagonal shape. The separate mouthpiece, made
indifferently of wood, horn, ivory or metal,[1] analogous to that of the
trumpet, was distinctly cup-shaped and fixed by a tenon to the upper
extremity of the pipe. The primitive instrument was an animal's horn.
[Illustration: From Capt. C. R. Day's _Descriptive Catalogue of Musical
Instruments_, by permission of Messrs. Eyre & Spottiswoode.
FIG. 1.--Cornetto Muto.