I love this from Jay Easton at the Bass Saxophone Page on his mostly-saxophone Web site:

"The bass saxophone is the lowest member of the saxophone family ever widely manufactured. If there was ever an unjustly neglected instrument, this is it. It was the original saxophone, intended to buttress the bassoons as a more powerful low reed voice in the growing ninteenth-century orchestra. It never caught on in this capacity, despite being praised highly by noted composers including Liszt, Donizetti, and Meyerbeer. Upon hearing the bass saxophone in 1842, Escudier wrote "You cannot imagine the beauty of sound and the quality of the notes." Hector Berlioz called the instrument "magnificent and profound." But for complicated political reasons, the bass saxophone never really took hold. It had a brief surge of popularity as a bass instrument in early jazz groups, and even had a superstar soloist in the great Adrian Rollini. But as with so many of the other saxophones, it fell from favor during the 1930’s, and is only now experiencing a resurgence through the efforts of classical performers like Andreas van Zoelen and jazz players like Scott Robinson and James Carter."

Jay’s site is a very interesting read, visually fun because of all the vintage instrument pictures, full of sound clips. And now he has a book "Writing for Saxophones" that I will be reviewing both here and on the Sax On The Web (SOTW) forums as soon as my copy arrives.