From: "Bill Kibby"
To: "John A. Tuttle"
Subject: Players & Self-Acting Pianos up to 1900
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 14:14:49 -0000
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PLAYER PIANO Instruction Booklets &c. for sale (Prices on application).
Arcadian Player Action Handbook, The British Player Action Company, Stour Road,
Old Ford, London E.3.
Arcadian Booklet: Hints on the Operation & Care of the Arcadian Piano Player.
The British Player Action Company Ltd. Stour Road, London E3. Address crossed
out, and rubber-stamped 17 Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park N.4.
Pratt Read Player Action: Style 72: Its Mechanism & Regulation.
Simplex Player Action: Its Mechanism, Its Regulation, How to play.
(Two quite different editions with the same title.)
1927 Steinway Welte Hard-back Music Roll Catalogue.
PLAYER PIANO ROLLS
I have a small selection of old player rolls for collection at Lowestoft,
some without boxes, details available on request, but they seem to be the
ones no-one wants!
PLAYER PIANOS & SELF-ACTING PIANOS
There are many museums and collectors who know far more than I do about
Player Pianos, but obviously, in the course of collecting information on
ordinary pianos, I come across many items on players.
Self-acting pianos are those which can play themselves in some mechanical
way, such as clockwork barrel pianos. Bates, Henderson, Rolfe & Clementi
were all early makers of self-acting pianos. The late Frank Holland coined
the term non-self-acting for instruments which didn't play themselves, but
I call them.... PIANOS!
The following pages of player and self-acting items are often updated,
so enthusiasts are advised to ask for a new list occasionally.
Circa 1825 Clementi made barrel pianos.
1825 Henderson 6 octave cabinet barrel piano in the Colt Clavier Collection.
The piano part of it was made by Broadwood.
1830 William Rolfe & Sons, London, Makers of Self-Acting pianos.
1838 Directory entry: William Rolfe Patent Self-Acting Pianofortes.
1840 Theodore Charles Bates, Piano Forte Maker (also self-acting pianos)
6 Ludgate hill & 65 Dorset street, Fleet street.
Circa 1840 Seytre, of Lyons, patented an organ- piano which seems to have
had some form of self-acting ability. "In the interior of my pianos, I place
the acting mechanism of an organ or accordion, which plays in all keys, and
which accompanies the piano or plays a solo without changing the cardboard roll."
Early player pianos were quite literally "piano players", separate units,
pushed up against the keyboard, with mechanical fingers to play the notes,
hence the names "Push-Up" or "External Player". Being in a separate cabinet,
they are also known as "Cabinet Players". The early success of these units
depended very much on the fact that almost everyone already had a piano to
which they could be attached.
1863 The Pianista was invented by Fourneaux, Paris. This was probably the
first pneumatic piano player with mechanical fingers, and had punched folding
cards for the tune sheets. The system was based on technology developed for
card- operated looms.
1880 Underwood's Automatic Piano Players used a tune sheet.
1883 Fourneaux made another player operated by card strips.
1884 Underwood had a patent method for perforating paper tune sheets.
1886 New U.S. Patents listed in a bound volume of Scientific American
magazine include...
Key board player - - R.T.Smith 347,134
Mech. M.I., Perf. music sheet for G.B.Kelly 350,748
Mechanical musical instrument H.F.Hambruch 352,054
Mechanical musical instrument O.P. Lochmann 350,541
Mechanical musical instrument E.G.Sturm 353,434
Mechanical musical instrument F.E.P.Ehrlich 349,634
Mechanical musical instrument H. Burckas 343,795
Mechanical musical instrument M. Gally 343,900
Mechanical musical instrument M. Gally 351,172
Mechanical musical instrument M. Gally 361,171
Mechanical musical instrument W.T. Weir 352,965
Pneumatic action for mus. ins. F. Stone 253,894
Pneumatic action for mus. ins. M.Gally 351,173
1888 Maxfield's patent for perforating paper tune sheets.
1892 List of Musical Instrument Makers in my Post Office London Directory
includes Fourneaux.
I had an enquiry from BBC Pebble Mill about the idea of using a player piano
for a story set in the 1890s: I pointed out that, firstly, there were only
"piano players", and secondly, there were very few of them.
1896 Perhaps the first pneumatic player pianos, by Thompson.
1897 Army & Navy Co-Operative Society's catalogue includes an ad for
Fourneaux's Pianista.
Enhanced enlargement of the Pianista against a piano.
1899 Thompson's pneumatic piano-player.
1900 From the beginning of the century until the war, there were an enormous
number of patents and inventions for players.
No fee has been charged for this information, but donations may be sent
by snail-mail to "Bill Kibby-Johnson" at Piano History Centre, 271 Southtown Road,
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, NR31 0JB (UK). Telephone 01493 65873 (11am.-11pm.).
Bill Kibby-Johnson MIMIT
