Exterior of the Lyon & Healy building in Chicago, Illinois | Chicago, Illinois

Lyon & Healy's headquarters and manufacturing facility, still in Chicago, contains a showroom and concert hall.

Lyon & Healy harps are widely-played by professional musicians since they make one of the few harps for orchestral use — which are known as " concert harps " or " pedal harps ".

In addition, Lyon & Healy makes smaller versions of the harp, which are known as folk harps ( based on traditional Irish instruments ) or lever harps ( which use levers to change the pitch of the string rather than pedals ).

In the 1980s, Lyon & Healy also began to manufacture electroacoustic harps as well as solid body electric harps in later years.

The full history of Lyon & Healy is complicated by the destruction of its building and loss of company records during four fires including the Great Chicago Fire ( 1871 ).

Letters and trade catalogs containing information about this company are not forthcoming as to exact dates, when Lyon & Healy began manufacturing instruments.

An article found within the pages of the Musical Courier states that Lyon & Healy began manufacturing instruments in 1885.

Clearly, Lyon & Healy was making plucked string instruments in the 1880s, with Washburn ( guitars, mandolins, banjos, and zithers ) being their premier line.

Lyon & Healy also made various percussion instruments.

Later, Lyon & Healy began manufacturing brass instruments, possibly as early as the 1890s.

Lyon & Healy also repaired instruments and evidently offered engraving services.

Complicating matters still further, Lyon & Healy engraved instruments, that it retailed but did not actually manufacture.

Lyon & Healy evidently began manufacturing these instruments around 1876 in its factories in Chicago and nearby cities.

Lyon & Healy built their first harp in 1889.

In 1890, Lyon & Healy introduced the Style 23 Harp, still one of the most popular and recognizable designs in the world.

Lyon & Healy produces one of the most ornate and elaborate harps in the world, the Louis XV, which includes carvings of leaves, flowers, scrolls, and shells along its neck and kneeblock, as well the soundboard edges.

By the 1900s, Lyon & Healy was one of the largest music publishers in the world, and sold new and antique violins, pianos, and other instruments.

However, In 1920s, Lyon & Healy sold its brass musical instrument manufacturing branch ( see " New Langwill Index ").

In 1928, Lyon & Healy introduced one of the most unusual harps ever designed for mass production, the " Salzedo Model ", designed in collaboration with the harpist Carlos Salzedo.

In the 1960s, Lyon & Healy introduced a smaller lever harp, the " Troubadour ", a 36-string harp that is designed for young beginners, who have smaller hands and may find playing a concert harp difficult, as well as hobbyists.

In the late 1970s, Lyon & Healy was purchased by Steinway & Sons ( then owned by CBS ), and consequently closed their retail stores in the Chicago area, that had been selling sheet music and musical instruments, and their education departments — to focus on the harp division.

Amplified ( electro-acoustic ) hollow body and solid body electric lever harps are produced by many harpmakers at this time, such as Lyon and Healy Harps out of Chicago, Salvi Harps out of Italy, and Camac Harps out of France.

The company was founded in 1864 by George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy, who moved from Boston to start a sheet music shop for music publisher Oliver Ditson.

George W. Lyon patented his cottage upright in 1878 and it was sold under the Lyon and Healy name.

Lyon retired in 1889 ; Healy died in 1905.

There is good archaeological evidence for this process and crucibles used to produce brass by cementation have been found on Roman period sites including Xanten and Nidda in Germany, Lyon in France and at a number of sites in Britain.

" Michel De Villeneuve " had contracts with Jean Frellon for that work, and the Servetus scholar-researcher Francisco Javier González Echeverría presented research that became an accepted communication in the International Society for the History of Medicine which concluded that Michael De Villeneuve ( Michael Servetus ) is the author of the commentaries of this edition of Frellon, in Lyon.

In Scottish heraldry, the Lord Lyon King of Arms in the Act of 1672 is empowered to grant arms to " vertuous and well deserving persons.

INTERCAL is an esoteric programming language that was created as a parody by Don Woods and James M. Lyon, two Princeton University students, in 1972.

* 1987 – In France, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie ( aka the " Butcher of Lyon ") is convicted of crimes against humanity and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

He stayed for some time in Lyon, and now he is living in Vienne.

Several years earlier, DOB founders Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon similarly relegated sexual acts as unnecessary in determining what a lesbian is, by providing their definition: " a woman whose primary erotic, psychological, emotional and social interest is in a member of her own sex, even though that interest may not be overtly expressed ".

Latin versions of both had recently been published in Lyon, and extracts from both are paraphrased ( in the second case almost literally ) in his first two verses, the first of which is appended to this article.

* At the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 one of the four medical schools is named after Laennec.

It is possible to travel to the west coast at Bordeaux in two and a half hours, to the Mediterranean coast via Avignon and from there to Spain and Barcelona, or to Lyon, Strasbourg and Lille.

Culturally, as the Sorbonne and Louvre are both establishing extensions in the UAE, a plan is in the works to recreate a miniature Lyon city in Dubai complete with public squares, restaurants and museums.

He is the son of William Shawn, the longtime editor of The New Yorker, and journalist Cecille Shawn ( née Lyon ); his brother, Allen, is a composer.

** William Lyon Mackenzie King is re-elected as Canadian prime minister.

* Lugdunum ( Lyon ) is founded.

* King Chilperic I dies and is succeeded by his nephew Gundobad, whose realm covers much of eastern Gaul and has two capitals, at Lyon and Geneva.

* June 4 – Elizabeth Thible is the first woman to ride in a hot air balloon, at Lyon, France.

Avignon is situated on the left bank of the Rhône river, a few kilometres above its confluence with the Durance, about south-east of Paris, south of Lyon and north-north-west of Marseille.

The memory of St. Eucherius still clings to three vast caves near the village of Beaumont, whither, it is said, the people of Lyon had to go in search of him when they sought him to make him their archbishop.