Where does Saxophone come from?
The saxophone comes from Belgium. Adolphe Sax, an instrument maker from Dinant who grew up in his father's workshop in Brussels, designed it around 1840, then moved to Paris, where he patented a whole family of saxophones in 1846.
Brass with a reed
Sax studied flute and clarinet in Brussels, and his first important invention was an improved bass clarinet. That work led him to a new idea: an instrument with the power of brass and the agility of a woodwind. He gave it a single-reed mouthpiece and a conical brass body. Unlike the clarinet, which jumps a twelfth when overblown, it overblows at the octave, so both registers use the same fingering. Belgian accounts say the first saxophone was ready in 1841.
Paris and the patent
In 1842 Sax moved to Paris, invited by Lieutenant-General de Rumigny to give the French army better instruments, and that year the composer Hector Berlioz wrote approvingly of the saxophone. On 28 June 1846 Sax received a 15-year patent covering 14 saxophones in two families of seven, from sopranino to contrabass. The instruments in B♭ and E♭ soon became the standard. In the 1840s and 1850s French and British military bands took them up, but orchestras never made the saxophone a regular member.
Why people think of New Orleans
Jazz made the saxophone famous, so many people assume it was born in America. It actually reached the United States as a band instrument: in the late 1800s the bandleader Patrick Gilmore and the Dutch-born saxophonist Edward Lefebre promoted it there. Vaudeville and ragtime bands took it up around 1900, and dance bands in the early 1920s. Only then did players such as Coleman Hawkins and later Charlie Parker turn it into one of the great voices of jazz.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Saxophone ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Adolphe Sax ↗ · brusselstimes.com ↗
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