Production Dates of 65-Note Player Pianos

Julian Dyer says about the general introduction of the 88-note roll
standard:

> However, the article is a bit misleading.  Although the convention it
> refers to was held in 1911, the standard itself dates back to 1908,
> agreed at a convention in Buffalo, according to the books that mention
> it.  The 1911 one was a re-iteration of an already agreed format.
> I don't recall ever seeing an article reporting the original 1908
> agreement.

There were two conventions establishing 88-note, weren't there, one
after the other in 1908 and 1909.  The first one fixed the roll width
and note positions and I think the sustain port, and the second fixed 
the hammer-lift port (where there was one) and things that had been
overlooked in the first convention, like the size of take-up spools so
that acceleration would be standard from piano to piano.  Since reroll
and shutoff never became standard, they presumably were overlooked
both times, as was the placing of theme or accentuation ports.

A de facto standard existed some four or five years prior to the 1908
convention in the updated Melville Clark 88-note roll, on which the
international standard was based.  As I recall, Clark started with
65-note in his experimental upright -- not a pushup like the Pianola --
in 1895, widened the roll pro rata for 88-note in the Apollo in 1899,
then added dynamic holes down the edges and shrunk everything to nine-
to-the-inch for the Solo Apollo in about 1902 and only then realised
this opened up the possibility of having 88 notes for ordinary rolls
on paper the same width as 65-note.  So our modern standard is really
the Solo Apollo with the edges cut off.

There are, as I said recently, pianos around with "modern" 88-note
actions dating from well before 1908.  I think the first nine-notes-
to-the-inch 88-note rolls appeared in 1903, and Hupfeld, Wilcox & White
(Angelus) and Aeolian agreed their "themed" version in 1909, in fact
after Aeolian had already started production.

A report on the agreements of the two conventions was contained in a
reprint of a American Piano Technicians booklet of 1909 which Frank
Adams of AMR did in the 1970s.  I've got a copy somewhere but not sure
quite where !

Dan Wilson, London