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Here we have an early Bluthner grand advertised in Argentina, described as "Piano De Media Cola Bluthner" and "PIANO ALEMÁN DE 1/2 COLA". I gather that in Spanish and other Romance languages terms such as "Cola", "1/2 Cola", "1/4 Cola" indicate the length of a grand piano, but I am not clear what precisely they mean.

Does anyone know exactly what "1/2 Cola" means, and so how long this piano is?

Or alternatively, would anyone care to guess from the pictures how long it is?

1/2 Cola would mean half size piano. That could be anything from 180 to 210 cm.
The piano looks like a 190-200 cm with a Bluthner Patent Action. Made around 1890.

I thought it looks longer? 220 or 230 cm perhaps?

I think those are imprecise terms. Like baby grand or concert grand by which you can have a rought idea of the actual size but not the exact one.

My guess is 1/4 cola should be about 170cm 1/2 cola about 2 m..more or less.

Carlos

PS: literally cola means tail

Media cola is a Spanish term meaning baby grand. Many people call a grand piano of any length a baby grand including my 7 footer.

According to yahoo:
https://es.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110818204216AAIei3K

Piano de 1/4 de cola: from 131 to 189 cm long.


Piano de 1/2 cola: from 190 to 225 cm long

Piano de 3/4 de cola: from 226 to 255 cm long

Piano de cola de concierto o de Gran Cola: longer than 256 cm and up to 270 long

Piano de semi concierto: about 240 centímetros de largo.

Carlos

"Cola" means tail in Spanish. I'm used to the French version of this: "piano à queue". The French usually use these categories (the sizes I give are indicative of my experience, but I don't think there is any set rule for this: people will often not agree about the category of a particular piano):

- Piano à queue de concert: at least 260 cm
- 3/4 queue: at least 220 cm
- 1/2 queue: at least 180 cm
- 1/4 queue: at least 150 cm
- Crapaud (which means "toad"): shorter than it is wide.

Looking at the pictures of this piano I would estimate it to be around 200 cm, but that's just a guess.

If it is that long it would be a 3/4 Size. The 1/1 Size is 280 cm. It is hard to see the actual length from the picture, but as it is called half size I don't think it is longer than a Steinway B.
There are several definitions of "Cola". One of them is size depending on the context.

Hello,

Just to clarify, there are many meanings for the word cola, but none of them is "size" (tamaño). When in doubt we have an "authoritative" source for the definitions:

http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=cola

When talking about pianos you could talk about the length of the "cola" (but if you do that prepare for a funny conversations with lots of double meanings and puns ), but you can't say this is "cola" than that.

This nomenclature comes from understanding that a grand piano is composed of the keyboard, which is more or less of the same size for any piano, and the tail, which varies in size. So you have full tail, 1/2 tail, 1/4 tail, etc ..

Carlos

There was just a very similar thread, but for the English names:

Dividing Lengths Between Grands

Cool stuff! I love language. Maybe we should set up a translation table or glossary!

I also like the observation that the action-end of most grands is fairly consistent--at least in length--although still not a perfect measure, it is the differences in tail size that more closely matches the different speaking length of the strings.

It looks like it might be a style 9 or 10. It's difficult to tell them apart sometimes as style 9s could range from 6'9 to 7'4, and style 10 could be 7'6 to 7'8 so you have to know things like the break points in the scale design and bridge position. To be honest I can't tell you what the differences are, only that there are those differences.

The serial number may well tell you, but if this was exported from Germany it could be the records are lost, unless it was sold through London, and then they'll have it on their database, and can tell you exactly what it is. It's likely that it was sold through London at that time, but don't count on it!

As long as it doesn't indicate the quantity of a can of "Cola" which was spilled into the pianos specified then I wouldn't worry about it too much .

Cool. My piano just makes it under the wire of a half cola. . Now my friends can finally stop arguing about how crazy I’ve become.

Secretly I think I hit the bat poop level this year.

Silly, every senior citizen in the USA knows that COLA is the annual Cost of Living Adjustment for their Social Security checks.