Lindeman & Sons' pianos placed well at many agricultural fairs but they did not earn top honors at major industrial exhibitions. The firm advertised they had been awarded "the first premium gold medal for novelty, superiority and excellence" at the 1865 American Institute Fair, but the list of awards showed that they placed after George Steck & Co., and the Driggs Patent Piano Co., of New York. They were one of only three American piano makers to exhibit at the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition, but failed to win an award and their participation was eclipsed in most American reports by the fierce competition between Steinway and Chickering. A sympathetic article in the "American Eclectic Medical Review" reported that the cycloid shown at Paris had "fully the power of the best semi-grand but with about two thirds the size," but a "New York Times" review of the Exposition described the tone of the example at Paris as "pleasant, but thin" and reported that there were "better instruments of the same construction in the Norwegian department.".