The Pianola Institute based in London has launched its web site, which
is at:

   http://www.pianola-inst.ndirect.co.uk/

They invite comments and corrections.  "Pianola" is construed halfway
between the modern enthusiast's definition:

 - (with a small p) a foot-operated device for playing the piano * using
paper rolls and (with a large P) the Aeolian Co.'s unique * version of
such and the Aeolian Company's definition at the time, which was:

 - any machine of any description at all which we can get out of the
door for money using the name, so that reproducing pianos sneak in under
the definition when the pedants aren't looking.

There's quite an interesting paragraph about Edwin Votey who "invented"
the pianola:

> The first Pianola was completed by Edwin S. Votey in a workshop
> at his home at 312, Forest Avenue, Detroit, in the spring and
> summer of 1895.  Votey later joined the Aeolian company, which
> put the instrument on sale in the USA in 1897, and in Europe in
> 1899.  But the Pianola and its competitors were not only the
> invention of any one person: E. S. Votey's particular contribution
> was to draw together a number of existing mechanisms which
> rendered his creation the first truly musical piano-playing
> device in the world.

1895 - just the same year that Melville Clark was laboriously building
his first 65-note prototype upright !

The Pianola prototype pushup was presented to the Smithsonian Institute
and there's a well-known photo of Votey handing it over.  Has anyone
here had a good look at it?  Was it ever actually marketed in that form
-- a wall of wooden apparatus between the player and the piano -- rather
than the relatively neat and modest device we know well in Europe ?

Dan Wilson, London