1915] The Piano-Player— Scientific Aspects 397 



AVEKKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, March 19, 1915 



His Grace The Duke of Northumberland, K.G. P.O. D.C.L. 

 F.R.S., President, in the Chair. 



Professor G. H. Bryan, Sc.D. F.R.S. 



The Piano-Player— Scientific Aspects. 



There are very few modern inventions which have not been employed 

 either directly or indirectly in the present war for the destruction of 

 property and of human life. The pneumatic piano-player is one of 

 the few conspicuous exceptions. It is also exceptional in several 

 other ways. While other discoveries have been discussed and 

 described in considerable detail in scientific, engineering and popular 

 books, periodicals and papers, the piano-player possesses but a scanty 

 literature outside the catalogues of the manufacturers. Again, the 

 piano-player has never been associated with any inventor of distinc- 

 tion, and the general public knows nothing about its history. The 

 aeroplane on the other hand is closely linked in popular thought, not 

 only with a large number of modern names such as Wright, Langley, 

 Farman, Bleriot, and Cody, but also with the names of many designers 

 and projectors of aeroplanes in the days when aviation was impossible, 

 such as Dante of Perugia and Leonardo da Vinci. Yet, considered 

 merely from an engineering point of view, the modern i^iano-player 

 is a marvel of human ingenuity. 



Almost overshadowing Mozart's house at Salzburg is an organ 

 played by clockwork, for which Mozart composed several pieces. I 

 have a music-roll of one of these which is also interesting from being 

 one of the early attempts at roll cutting by Mr. J. H. Morrison, who 

 carefully marked out the notes and chopped out the perforations with 

 a hand punch, with many erasures and corrections. 



The feature which distinguishes the modern piano-player from 

 its predecessors is the element of controllability, which leaves the 

 interpretation of the music largely under the control of the performer. 

 Of recent years, however, accent devices, automatically operated, have 

 l)een added. The construction of these devices is essentially an 

 engineering problem, and their working as well as all the other 

 engineering details of the modern player will be willingly explained 

 to any one who visits one of the principal music warehouses. The 

 separation of the scale into two independently controlled halves was 



Vol. XXI. (No. 109) 2 d 



