Yet another bizarre use for piano rolls -- First we had the torpedo-
controlling roll (see old MMD Digests), and now revealed is the
typewriter-controlling roll!

From the Dead Media mailing list, I ran across the following
description of something called the Auto-typist.  Remember the days
before nice computer printers and photocopiers (like the 1960s)?

This, perhaps, is what mass mailing was all about...  an automatic
typewriter that could type 150 words per minute.  It was made by the
American Typewriter Company of Chicago.  It could type individualized
business letters assembled from a large library of "canned" paragraphs.
The operator would select the coded numbers of the paragraphs desired,
put in paper, and start it up.  The typewriters operated at such high
speed that they somehow allowed for extra time if two adjacent letters
were used in a word, to allow for the letters to fall back into the
basket.  The text I read led me to guess that required delay may have
been encoded on the roll somehow, by the master-roll cutter person.

  "The automatic typewriter is not an electric typewriter; it is
  pneumatic.  The perforated master roll passes over air-valve slots.
  Each perforation permits air to escape from a particular slot, thus
  opening a valve.  Each valve is connected by a tiny hose to a
  bellows, and each bellows is attached to a key.  As the valves open,
  the bellows operates and the type bars are snapped up against the
  paper.  The bellows-to-key arrangement is suitable for use with any
  make of manual or electric typewriter."

Anybody have more info or ever heard of this?

For further interesting Dead Media items, they have a web site,
http://www.islandnet.com/~ianc/dm/dm.html.  (The web site archive
hasn't caught up yet with the recent post on the Auto-typist, though.)

Rick Inzero, Rochester, NY      rdi@cci.com