Tuba after American bandmaster John Philip Sousa, resembles a hélicon with the bell pointed up (in the original models as the J. W. Pepper prototype and Sousa's concert instruments) and then curved to point forward (as developed by Conn and others). Some ancestors of the tuba, such as the military "bombardon", had unusual valve and bore arrangements compared to modern tubas. During the American Civil War, most brass bands used a branch of the brass family known as "saxhorns", which, by today's standards, have a narrower bore taper than tuba—the same as true cornets and baritones, but distinct from trumpets, euphoniums,
Horn (instrument) was challenged by rival instrument makers during his lifetime. Throughout the mid-1850s, he continued to experiment with the instrument's valve pattern. Later makers, particularly in America, altered the scale and designs sometimes to such an extent as to make it difficult to determine whether the larger sizes of the resulting instruments actually have descended from the saxhorn or the tuba. The tenor and baritone horns, amongst other sizes of instruments used in British brass bands, are members of the saxhorn family. The Wagner tuba is a rare brass instrument that is essentially a horn modified to have a larger bell