>[ I get the same feeling watching the endless music roll pass
>[ through the drive rollers on a Link orchestrion!

Robbie wrote the above comment in MMDigest 981228, wondering how
those Link rolls work without getting tangled.  I worked for IBM since
1959 in various capacities, but spent the largest part of my career in
line printer development.  (Yes, I remember all the programs to make
printers play music.)

The first printer I worked on was in 1972: we were developing a desktop
line printer which was the first one to use an etched stainless steel
band instead of a chain of individual type carriers.  Because this was
to be an office printer, a ribbon cartridge was developed which used a
"stuffer box".  That is, the ribbon was made in a continuous loop and
the part not being used was stuffed into narrow box where ink from the
unused part of the ribbon would bleed back into the dry area where a
character had just been struck.

This cartridge had a built-in set of rollers and a set of "stripper
fingers" to keep the ribbon from wrapping around the rollers.  The
result was the ribbon would weave back and forth in the familiar 'ribbon
candy' configuration, and was pulled out the other side.

In 1976 I bought a Link AX orchestrion.  Upon inspection, I found that
this 1920 Link had all the components we had designed into the printer
ribbon cartridge: rollers, stripper fingers and the whole works.  It
was a big vertical "stuffer box".  The printer developers were totally
unaware of the previous player piano technology.

Oh yes, one last coincidence: we were giving code names to our products
in development and printers were named after stars.  The printer with
the stuffer box was the "Lynx."

Bob Conant
Temporarily hiding out in Bradenton, FL