PEDALS (from pes, pedis, a foot). Certain appliances in the Organ, Pianoforte, and Harp, worked by the feet.
In the Organ they are keys, sounding notes, and played by the feet instead of the hands; and the Pedal - board is the whole breadth or range of such keys. When pedals were first applied to English organs—towards the end of the last century—they were made (in the words of an old treatise) to ‘drag down
’ the manual keys; and the...