Growing up, my mom and I would march over to my grandpa’s house every Tuesday for me to receive a trumpet lesson. I wasn’t a huge fan of playing the trumpet, and I don’t think my grandpa was a huge fan of teaching me, but none the less I would sit down with my grandpa and play from either 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on the mood he was in. This made me wonder, who invented the first trumpet? Whenever I watched TV, the royals announced their coming by blasting trumpets, so I knew it was made before the medieval ages. I remember watching a movie about ancient Egypt and the pharaoh’s son had been playing with a valveless trumpet, so I figured that it was made earlier than that. So exactly how long ago was the first trumpet made?
After doing some research, I have discovered that the earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. They were found all over the world. Bronze and silver ones were discovered in the grave of King Tut in Egypt, metal trumpets from China date back to this period, and other ancient versions of the trumpet were found in South America, Scandinavia, and Asia. So the trumpet has been around for 3000 years.
While the first trumpets were created this early, it wasn’t until the 19th century that valves were introduced to the trumpet. The earliest valves were invented in 1814 by Henry Stölzel, but he wasn’t successful with his invention until four years later when he collaborated with Friedrich Blühmel to create “The Rotary Valve”, which is the trumpet that we have modeled ours off of today.
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