George B Kelly was first associated with roll manufacture in the mid
1870s.  According to Aeolian in 1922, he was an organ action contractor
at the Mason & Hamlin organ works and became involved with making parts
for early organettes.  With partners Rand & Given, he set up in the
roll business c. 1877, this becoming the Automatic Music Paper Co.
Their logo can be found on the right hand edge of many early rolls as
"Automatic MP Co" surrounding a pair of crossed music notes.

AMP and the Mechanical Orguinette Co. combined forces in 1887 to form
the Aeolian Company and Kelly was its first President.  The AMP name
survived for some 20 years on rolls but Kelly does not appear to have
been actively involved with Aeolian for long.  The May 1904 salary
list shows him receiving $3000 for patents, but not holding a named
position.  (Most of this detail comes from Rex Lawson's "Towards a
history of the Aeolian Company", Pianola Institute Journal 11, 1998.)

A degree of scepticism should be exercised when assessing statements
about Kelly's wind motor.  He was a prolific inventor and among his
many patents was indeed the slide-valve suction-operated wind motor
of the type that powered pretty well every player piano.  However, this
was by no means invented out of the blue by Kelly.  There had been wind
motors for some time -- the key point was that his operated on suction.

The other part of the quote in the original post says that "in 1887,
Edwin Welte introduced the perforated paper roll in Germany."  This
is another widely touted "fact", in all probability repeating company
publicity, but is likewise untrue.

 [ The quote is from the paper, "Fluency in general music and arts
 [ technologies: Is the future of music a garage band mentality?"
 [ by Dr. Peter Gouzouasis, Associate Professor in the Department
 [ of Curriculum Studies at The University of British Columbia,
 [ Vancouver, B.C.  The paper, file date 9/17/04, is available at
 [ http://www.curricstudies.educ.ubc.ca/faculty/facpages/goudownload/ACT_2004.pdf
 [
 [ This document was apparently submitted for publication in the
 [ journal of Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education (ACT),
 [ published by Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Illinois.
 [ More at http://www.siue.edu/MUSIC/ACTPAPERS/index.html  -- Robbie


One example from the mid 1870s provides an interesting background to
both wind-motor and roll-player assertions...

The 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia included the Schmoele
Brothers "Electro-Magnetic Orchestra", a roll-playing organ.  This was
reported at the time in the Scientific American and in "The Centennial
Exposition, described and illustrated, being a concise and graphic
description of this grand enterprise, commemorative of the first
centenary of American independence" by J. S. Ingram, published by
Hubbard Brothers, Philadelphia, Penna., 1876.  Ingram wrote:

   "The instrument somewhat resembled an orchestrion in general
appearance, and was so arranged that it could be played from
a keyboard like an ordinary pipe-organ.  The chief improvement was
the reading-machine, which was connected with the instrument by wires,
along which the currents of electricity governing the action were
conducted.

   "The music sheets were in the form of rolls, which were drawn under
a row of charged feelers or 'readers,' whose office was to distinguish
the notes.  They were moved by passing between two gum-covered rollers,
rotated by a mechanism called a 'wind engine.'  The motor power of this
was the compressed air or 'wind' of the bellows of the instrument; and
it contained in its construction all the necessary elements of a
steam-engine, represented, however, in such different forms that no
resemblance to the latter was left.  It was a double engine, each pair
of opposite wind-pockets being equivalent to a steam cylinder, and the
alternate movements of their swinging leaves were the counterparts of
the push and return of the piston-head."


So here, in 1876, is a description of an operative roll-playing
instrument with a wind motor!  It read the rolls electrically, and used
pressure rather than suction to operate the motor, but it still neatly
demolishes the received wisdom that both of these were wholly later
inventions.  Obviously this does not prove that there were no earlier
instruments with the same elements in them.  You can find the Schmoele
instrument very nicely described in their 1874 US patent, no. 189,391,
which even goes on to describe an expression system.  Later patents
elaborated on the ideas.

Incidentally, the Schmoele instrument used paper rolls printed with
magnetic ink read by electrical contacts, although the Scientific
American description (which can be found in Bowers' "Encyclopaedia")
says they were also using perforated rolls with a metal backing plate,
which worked just as well.  I believe this was an evolution of earlier
technology from telegraph equipment, but haven't any details.

There are some who question whether the Welte-Mignon recording system
used conductive ink for its recordings some 30 years later, and indeed
this was quoted in the December 2004 AMICA bulletin as a 1950s myth
arising from technology of the day -- yet it was in reality old-hat by
1905!  This doesn't tell us what Welte actually did, of course, but it
does show how later writers often underestimate the sophistication of
earlier generations.

Now that all patents are available online, it is far easier to use then
to trace how thinking developed.  They don't tell the whole story, and
you also need to have corroborative information such as the contemporary
accounts quoted above, some of which are also online.  I think that
with application of some effort quite a lot of the early history could
be fleshed out and some of the longstanding myths be exposed for the
fiction they are.  I'd love to read this.  Anyone have a year or two
to spare doing it?

Julian Dyer
London