[ I asked Mark to begin this new discussion thread.  -- Robbie

Here are a few thoughts about the history of player pianos and other
media.  First, two good sources:  One is the publication, "Technology
and Culture", which is the journal of the Society for the History of
Technology.  There's something of an on-line index, but I think you'll
be better off finding and perusing them in person.  Any comprehensive
research library ought to have them.

For matters relating to the history of radios, phonographs, the
invasion of television, and the reaction of the public to all of these,
I can recommend nothing better than Charlie Summers' OTR Digest.  You
can access him and the list and the archives of the list through
http://www.oldradio.net/ .  Contributors include actors, writers, and
engineers who worked in US network radio, plus historians like Michael
Biel (an expert on phonograph records) and Elizabeth McLeod (an expert
on all things radio, especially "Amos 'n' Andy".)

I'm honored to have been included in this discussion, though I should
admit at the outset that my principal interests lie in the history of
technology at a nuts-and-bolts level.  I've worked in and around radio
and audio, sometimes professionally but more often as a dilettante,
if I've spelled it correctly.

I _can_ tell you that my mother, age 85, has vivid memories of the
Ampico reproducing piano in her family's formal parlor in Cleveland
during the 1920's and '30's.  _Everybody's_ parlor had a piano in it.
It's just something you had.  If you actually wanted to _hear_ the
piano, you either gave the daughters piano lessons or you got a player
piano.  Piano lessons were lost on my mother and even her more-dutiful
younger sister, so they got the Ampico.  And they never even played it
much: the piano remained a prop, supporting artificial flowers and
candelabra on top and sheltering the girls, who played Indian Teepee
underneath.

The family also had a radio and a phonograph.  The radio got the most
use: it was free, and that was a distinct consideration in a family
whose cash flow was unreliable.

From a larger historical standpoint, radio technology and marketing
supported phonograph technology and marketing, and vice-versa--but only
after a mighty battle between the two media.

Radio initially looked like it would be a clear winner over phonograph
music because it was clearer--generally being broadcast live--and free,
as previously mentioned.   Phonograph technology soon benefited from
radio when electronic recording was introduced.  Improved microphones,
which were a direct result of radio work, allowed softer-voiced singers
and more complex arrangements of musicians to make records.

I don't think that the player piano was really in the great technology
chain of popular music in that the technology of these magnificent
devices were never adopted by other musical instruments.  I believe
that this is partly what makes them so attractive as a pursuit by the
enthusiasts on our Mechanical Music Digest.

It's no accident that many of the craftsmen who post to the Mechanical
Music Digest are also computer professionals who understand both
hardware and software.  It's fascinating to read their messages, which
appropriately use the language of digital technology to describe the
workings of, say, a reproducer piano.

Note that we speak of mechanical musical instruments, which include
musical boxes (many of which had interchangeable software much like
that of phonographs,) automatic violins, automatic organs, reproducing
pianos (like a player piano, but it sounds like a real human being
is playing it -- Rachmaninoff recorded rolls for these), and a nifty
automatic mechanical banjo (coin-operated) I saw once.

It would be fun to speculate that the complexities of mechanical
musical instruments later became part of our present-day computer
technology, but most of it, alas, came from telephone-switching
devices.  Bits and pieces of mechanical musical instrument technology
found its way into various industrial devices like automatic
typewriters, but it never again had an important role in music
or entertainment.

Mark Kinsler
Lancaster, Ohio USA
http://www.frognet.net/~kinsler