Craig,  Before I return to the fascinating world of the Welte system,
let me apologize to everyone for the awful way my letter to you was
first sent on this new computer.  I have been fighting with it to learn
how to properly use it.  Like arguing with your cat, a loosing battle!

Dick Simonton told me the story several times about the problems he
had, making the first recordings over a telephone line from Edwin
Welte's home to a radio station that had a Magnetophone recorder --
real cloak- and-dagger stuff.  When I worked at Ampex we had an
original old Magnetophone at the plant.  It was smuggled in pieces
out of Germany right after the war, right from under the noses of the
French, by Harold Lindsey and others, and assembled again in Redwood
City, California.

This one used metal tape at high speed, thin steel tape.  It worked,
too.  Harold and I once got it running and tried it out.  It ran at
a very high speed and I recall joking to Harold that if the tape broke
while we had our noses buried in it, we could be sliced to pieces!
It was the beginning of the Ampex recording business.

I seem to recall that the danger to all concerned originated with the
French military, who were in charge of that part of Germany after the
war.  They were obsessed with seeing to it that no one made any money,
except themselves, from any German undertaking.  Knowing several people
who lived in France then, the sour feeling about WW1 was still in full
force, and when the Allies won the war the French were determined to
extract the full measure of revenge on the Germans.

In some story of the secret taping, I recall reading that Edwin Welte
was very nervous and afraid, because he was scared of the French
military and that he was being spied upon.  It is certainly possible
that had they been caught, Dick would have been arrested and
imprisoned; the French were very good at that.  Remember that they
arrested Porsche and Renault about the same time.  Porsche got away
by the family paying a big ransom and Renault was murdered while in
custody.  I just read the biography of Louis Renault.  He said,
"They come in the night".

As to the location of Dick's roll library, the best one to talk to is
certainly Robert Simonton.  I know him well and he should be the best
source.  All I can recall is that Dick gave some rolls to, I think,
USC.  Then after he died, the family gave the remaining rolls in their
possession to USC.  Now, just what they did with them I cannot say.
I certainly hope that USC took proper care of them; but I never heard
anything about what they actually did with the rolls.  I wonder if they
still have them?

I have been pondering about that business of being able to instantly
replay the master roll.  I don't think that any photocell device would
have been practical, as photocells then were pretty crude and not
sensitive at all.  Not until Theodore Case developed a really sensitive
cell for sound motion pictures in about 1922 -- the focus of the big
battle between Case and Lee DeForest.  Read the wonderful story of this
in "The Speed of Sound", the best book ever written about the early
sound film shakeup of the movie business, and the dirty business doings
surrounding that transition.

No, my guess is that they read the resistivity of the ink track and
then it activated the electric solenoid action of the special playback
piano.  What is concerning me is this:  The ink track is very small and
any large current that was passed through the ink would turn it into
instant ashes.  I wonder if the system used an electrical bridge, with
the ink track as one leg of the bridge?

Someone more versed in electrical engineering than I would be the one
to enlighten us on that.  My world has always been mechanical engineer-
ing and instrumentation design.  However, the technology of doing this
would have been available to Edwin Welte, and I would not be surprised
at all if there really was a special piano device that could read the
ink lines of the master recording.  And do remember that Freiburg was
a university town, so skilled consulting in electrical and instrumenta-
tion engineering would probably be available to Welte.

What got to me then, when Dick Simonton opened my eyes to the wonders
of the Welte reproducing piano, was that here was a really successful
system that read not only note depression, but also speed and intensity
of the key strike, and all in 1900.  Aeolian had to resort to an
elaborate coding thing that I think had someone with the music in front
of him twiddling dials to approximate the bass and treble intensity and
translate that into roll punched dynamics.  Ampico resorted to the same
thing; but later used that spark chronograph invention.

Both systems relied on vast amounts of human interpretation before a
usable roll was produced.  And, here was Welte, with the ability to
get all the data right on the roll as played by the artist.  Truly an
amazing piece of clever engineering.  I wonder why no one else used the
concept?  Perhaps Welte would not issue a license to any other repro-
ducing piano maker.  Can't blame them.  You know, organ recorders are
digital, either on or off: but to do such a sophisticated analog
concept in 1900, well, that is real accomplishment.

 [ I believe that Ampico and Duo-Art both negotiated license from Welte
 [ to use Welte basic pneumatic patents in their respective systems.
 [ Charles F. Stoddard, who developed the Ampico system, also held
 [ basic pneumatic patents licensed to other firms.  I hope that con-
 [ firming documents can someday be found.  Anyhow, this suggests that
 [ there was at least a little cooperation.  -- Robbie

By the way, just how good is the Yamaha Disklavier system?  And, are
there any others now being made that really do justice to the piano?
I really got to hear a 7' Yamaha grand and the Disklavier the other
day at full potential and I was very impressed.  All the other contacts
with the piano have been in places where the thing was turned down to
the point where the soft passages would actually miss notes.  My active
attempts to do a little knob twirling were discouraged by the
management, in Spades.

The recording session that I was privileged to attend, was for a 12-
or 13-reel set that Ampex put out years ago, when they were in the
pre-recorded reel-to-reel business.  Most people do not know about
them.  Dick most kindly gifted me with a set and I am now having a
friend put them on CDs before the tape gets injured.  They are prized
possessions.  Someone mentioned that the two LP records were full of
hum and distortion.  These tapes are superb and the playing is
electrifying.

Look at the book by Charles Davis Smith, "The Welte-Mignon: Its Music
and Musicians", published in 1994 by Vestal Press for AMICA.  It is
worth its weight in gold.

Regards,  Jim Crank