Here is a follow up on the Weber foot-pumped grand with the cast iron
keybed, that appeared in 080617 MMDigest.  The person I bought it from
got back to me a few months after I bought the piano.  She said her
mother told her that the person who was selling the piano at the time
contacted them, and told them that the piano came out of the Morris
Steinert house on Commonwealth Ave.  Steinert has been a major
manufacturer of pianos, and is the official piano dealer in Boston
of Steinway & Sons pianos since the 1860s.

The Weber Grand Pianola in the illustration in Alfred Dolge's 1911
book, "Pianos And Their Makers", is the same as the Steinert piano.
You can get information on the company (and person) of Morris Steinert
by going to their web site http://www.msteinert.com/ 

Magazine advertisements that appeared in 1910 announced that Steinway
& Sons and The Aeolian Company would collaborate on making a Steinway
Pianola, in both grand and upright models.  The first ad is predictably
enough by The Aeolian Company, bragging that it had signed Steinway &
Sons.  The second ad is more surprising: Steinway is bragging that its
pianos are so good that The Aeolian Company picked it to put its famous
Pianola mechanism into!

Randolph Herr