I'll give you a link to do your own research about this horn: www.courtois-paris.com/panneauhisto.html Antoine Courtois is the oldest continuous manufacturer of Wind Instruments in Europe, and have been played by notible soloists and performers for over 150 years. If you pick up virtually any book on the history of wind instruments, you will find his name. For those of us interested in the history of the Saxophone, the name Antoine Courtois is infamous for his law suit with Adolphe Sax over SUPPOSED patents and invention infringments. Here is a brief over view: "Our story begins with a lawsuit between Antoine (Adolphe) Sax and Antoine Courtois. Antoine Sax, whose nickname was Adolphe, was constantly embroiled in legal wrangling over the authenticity of his inventions. He is crediting with inventing the saxophone when other fusions of ophicleides and woodwinds were already in existence, and many credited him with inventing the bass clarinet, though this instrument predated Sax by many years. To give him his due, Sax greatly improved any instrument he turned his mind to, and the saxhorn family of brass instruments was a genuine Sax creation that forever changed the world of music, displacing the keyed bugles, serpents, ophicleides, and other inferior antique junk tolerated by musicians and Sax’s peers and patrons alike (the latter of whom included Hector Berlioz and Meyerbeer). Saxhorns became a staple of marching bands, especially in the United States. If you examine photos of Civil War bands of the North and South, you will see over-the-shoulder and upright saxhorns in abundance. Coming back to the matter of the lawsuit: In 1855, Sax lost a lawsuit with Antoine Courtois, giving Courtois the right to manufacture saxhorns, which they do to this very day. This same year, a virtuoso cornetist and part-time instrument builder and designer named Herman Koenig, invented the family of horns that bears his name, and which were built by Antoine Courtois. "