Editing Player piano (section)

== History==
The first practical pneumatic piano player, manufactured by the Aeolian Company and called the "Pianola",<ref name="SmithsonianPianola">{{cite web |url= https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_605772|title= Aeolian Co. Pianola Model Piano Player |publisher= National Museum of American History|quote=Edwin Votey is attributed as the inventor for this instrument. |access-date=July 28, 2022}}</ref> was invented in 1896 by [[Edwin S. Votey]], and came into widespread use in the 20th century. The name "pianola", sometimes used as a generic name for any player piano, came from this invention. The mechanism of this player piano was all-pneumatic: foot-operated bellows provided a vacuum to operate a pneumatic motor and drive the take-up spool, while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two stages to sufficient strength to strike a [[Musical note|note]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=CT1BAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA17|title=Regulation and Repair of Piano and Player Mechanism: Together with Tuning as Science and Art ...|first=William Braid|last=White|date=March 12, 1909|publisher=E.L. Bill|via=Google Books |access-date=July 28, 2022}}</ref>

=== 1900–1910 ===
[[Image:Pneumatic piano.png|thumb|left|upright|220px|The mechanism of a player piano.<ol style="margin-left:1.5em;">
<li><!-- 1. --> Pedal.
<li><!-- 2. --> Pedal connection.
<li><!-- 3. --> Exhauster (one only shown).
<li><!-- 4. --> Reservoir; high tension (low-tension reservoir not shown.)
<li><!-- 5. --> Exhaust trunk.
<li><!-- 6. --> Exhaust tube to motor.
<li><!-- 7. --> Air space above primary valves.
<li><!-- 8. --> Secondary valves.
<li><!-- 9. --> Striking pneumatic.
<li><!-- 10. --> Connection from pneumatic to action of piano.
<li><!-- 11. --> Piano action.
<li><!-- 12. --> Pneumatic motor.
<li><!-- 13. --> Trackerboard (music roll passes over trackerboard).</ol>]]

Votey advertised the Pianola widely, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements. It was sold initially for $250, and then other, cheaper makes were launched. A standard 65-note format evolved, with {{convert |11+1/4|in|mm|adj=mid|-wide}} rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chicago Coin-Operated Piano and Orchestrion Rolls |url=https://www.mechanicalmusicpress.com/history/articles/cgorolls/cgo_rolls.htm? |access-date=2025-04-27 |website=www.mechanicalmusicpress.com}}</ref>

By 1903, the [[Aeolian Company]] had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month. Many companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly consisting of light, religious, or classical music. [[Ragtime music]] also featured.<ref>{{Cite web |title=notes - Westfield Center |url=https://westfield.org/conferences/pianola/schedule/notes.html |access-date=2025-04-27 |website=westfield.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Aeolian Piano Rolls (1903) |url=https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/aeolian-piano-rolls-1903/ |access-date=2025-04-27 |website=The Public Domain Review |language=en}}</ref>

Melville Clark introduced two important features to the player piano: the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard.

By the end of the decade, the piano player device and the 65-note format became obsolete. This caused problems for many small manufacturers, who had already invested in 65-note player operations, ultimately resulting in rapid consolidation in the industry.

A new, full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in [[Buffalo, New York]] in 1908 at the so-called [[Buffalo Convention]].  This kept the 11{{frac|1|4}}-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch. This meant that any player piano could now play any make of roll. This consensus was crucial for avoiding a costly [[format war]], which plagued almost every other form of entertainment medium that followed roll music.

While the player piano matured in America, an inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which would reproduce all aspects of a performance automatically, so that the machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist were sitting at the piano keyboard. Known as a Reproducing Piano, this device, the [[Welte-Mignon]], was launched in 1904. It created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll. This allowed owners of player pianos to experience a professional performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it.

Aeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the Themodist being an invention which was said to bring out the melody clearly above the accompaniment.<ref name="New York Sun">''New York Sun'', 14 March 1909.</ref> Sales grew rapidly, and with the instruments now relatively mature, in this decade a wider variety of rolls became available. Two major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll.
* Hand-played rolls introduced [[musical phrasing]] into the rolls, so that player pianists did not have to introduce it through the use of tempo controls, which few felt inclined to do.
* Word rolls featured printed lyrics in the margins,<ref name="Sanjek 1988 3">{{cite book|author=Russell Sanjek|title=American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years, Volume III: From 1900-1984|url={{Google books|EzVesnkLEtUC|page=29|plainurl=yes}}|volume=3|date=28 July 1988|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-802127-8|page=29|oclc=300414899 |access-date=July 28, 2022}}</ref> making it simple to use players to accompany singing in the home, a popular activity before radio and disc recordings became widely available.

The other major advance was the arrival in America of two commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano: the [[Ampico]] (from 1911 but fully 're-enacting' by 1916) and the Duo-Art (1914). Artrio-Angelus also introduced a reproducing player from 1916. When World War I came in 1914, German patents were seized in the US. In England, Aeolian had a huge factory and sales network and easily outsold the Ampico. Other makers of Reproducing systems, Hupfeld Meisterspiel DEA (1907) and Philipps Duca (c 1909), were successful in Europe. Hupfeld perfected an 88 note reproducing system, the Triphonola, in 1919, and around 5% of players sold were Reproducing Pianos.

In America by the end of the decade, the new 'jazz age' and the rise of the fox-trot confirmed the player piano as the instrument of popular music, with classical music increasingly relegated to the reproducing piano. Most American roll companies stopped offering large classical catalogs before 1920, and abandoned 'instrumental' rolls (those without words) within a few years.

In England, the Aeolian Company continued to sell classical material, and customers remained willing to contribute to performances by following directions printed on the rolls and operate the hand and foot controls themselves. Sydney Grew, in his manual ''The Art of the Piano Player'', published in London in 1922, said that "it takes about three years to make a good player-pianist of a man or woman of average musical intelligence. It takes about seven years to make a good pianist, or organist, or singer".<ref>Quoted in Leikin, Anatole. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=cSSgCwAAQBAJ&dq=player+piano+sydney+grew&pg=PA10 The Performing Style of Alexander Scriabin]'' (2016), p.10</ref> Word rolls never became popular in England, as they cost 20% more than non-word rolls. As a result, post-World War I American and British roll collections looked very different.

=== 1950–present ===
[[Image:Player piano keyboard.jpg|thumb|upright|A player piano performing]]

In the early 1950s, player pianos and other instruments of the 1920s and earlier became collectable. An enthusiast, Frank Holland, who had collected player pianos while working in Canada, returned to England and held meetings of like-minded enthusiasts at his house in London. In 1959 this gathering was formalized as 'The Player Piano Group', and in the early 1960s Holland founded the British Piano Museum (now the [[Musical Museum, Brentford|Musical Museum]]) in Brentford.

In America, another collector, Harvey Roehl, published a book called ''Player Piano Treasury'' in 1961. This sold in large numbers and was followed by books published by Roehl's Vestal Press on how to rebuild and restore the instruments. Other societies were formed worldwide to preserve and study all aspects of mechanical music, among them the Musical Box Society International (MBSI) and the [[Automatic Musical Instruments Collector's Association]] (AMICA) in the USA.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.amica.org/|title=A M I C A |website=amica.org |access-date=July 28, 2022}}</ref> 

The revival of interest in player pianos in the 1960s led to renewed production. Aeolian revived the Pianola, this time in a small spinet piano suited to post-war housing, and other manufacturers followed. QRS offered a traditional player piano in its Story and Clark piano. Early enthusiasts could often get by with limited patching and repairs, although original 1920s instruments could still be found in working order.{{Citation needed|date=September 2007}} Complete rebuilding of old instruments to original condition became possible.