Lots of great little bits in here for people who want a detailed survey.

Thus, if you wanted a higher pitch, you had a smaller instrument, rather than traversing down the fingerboard of a larger instrument (which produced the same note, but a different quality of sound).

This is interesting to me because I just finished giving a biology lab tutorial on pipetting. We have different micropipettes that can dispense different ranges of liquid. Often, the ranges overlap a little, however, it's best to dispense from the middle of pipette's range. Not quite the same thing, but an neat cousin.