Musical Inventors, Part 12: Edwin S. Votey And The Player Piano

Edwin S. Votey was born in the Finger Lakes region of New York in 1856.

He went to public schools, became interested in mechanics, and developed strong engineering skills. 

The church still stands. Soon after moving there with the family, young Votey was hired as a clerk by the Estey Organ Company in Brattleboro.

He became an expert in organ design and mechanics, and traveled as a reed organ salesman and technician. During this time, Votey married Annie Gray, who was also from the Finger Lakes. They had three children together. Word about his talents must have gotten around, because he was offered a position as Technical Director at the Whitney Organ Company, and the Voteys moved to Detroit. 

C.J. Whitney had purchased the failing Detroit Organ Company, renamed it and hired new people, including W.R. Farrand, the son of a profitable drugstore owner, as Administrator. It was a success. 

Whitney retired in 1887 and sold the company to Farrand and Votey.

Votey then spent half of 1890 in Europe selling their instruments and studying pipe organs. When he returned, Farrand & Votey used what he learned in deciding to buy the Roosevelt Organ Works in New York City, a manufacturer of pipe organs. They made some of the biggest church organs in the country, mostly in the eastern United States but also as far away as La Compañía de Jesús Church in Quito, Ecuador.

The sale included several patents related to pipe organs, like methods of controlling air flow and making the keys more responsive to the player’s touch. These patents kept additional money coming into the company after Farrand and Votey bought it.

Votey held over twenty patents of his own, most having to do with organ design. He later patented a pilotless airplane that would drop bombs behind enemy lines in World War I. The war ended before any could be made.

In 1898, Votey became vice president of the Aeolian Company.

That’s when he used his engineering and industry acumen to invent the Pianola, an automated piano player.

By the mid-1800s, there were lots of self-playing instruments. From tiny music boxes to the componium and the panharmonicon to the huge calliope, the concept of musical automatons was nothing new. No one, however, had made an affordable self-playing piano. There were attempts at devices that attached to existing pianos. They had mechanical pistons that pressed the keys but, even when they worked well, attaching and removing them was a chore.

Votey’s Pianola was a step forward. It was sometimes called the “push up” player because it was on wheels and users would push it up to their piano’s keyboard.

The Pianola had several shortcomings. The piano couldn’t be played manually when the Pianola was in position. It had to be wheeled out of the way. It was huge, so storing it was a problem. And it was expensive, but the people who could afford it loved it.

The mechanism itself is clever. The foot pedals pump bellows to create a vacuum. Reservoirs keep the vacuum consistent even when the person pedaling isn’t.

The vacuum also powers a small motor that pulls a paper roll from one spindle to another across the tracker bar, and the paper has holes in it.

Each paper roll contained one song. Some rolls even had the song’s lyrics so you could sing along as the roll passed over the bar.

The paper roll was patented in the United States by Emil Welte of Welte & Sons. He was one of the sons. It was a German company who made orchestrions — automatic music machines — that used paper rolls so owners could switch songs. Paper rolls were also used experimentally in various organs.

John McTammany, a Scottish immigrant to the United States, had the concept to use paper rolls on pianos. The idea came to him while he was repairing a music box.

He took his prototypes to Boston and New York hoping to sell the design to instrument builders, but the companies, either shortly before or after his visits depending on who you believe, had their own players. 

McTammany may well have invented the use of paper rolls in player pianos, and held the patent on it, but he spent a lot of time and money suing companies who used it or any somewhat similar design. That was time and money he couldn’t use to manufacture his own pianos. He gave up on the music business and worked on his other major invention which used the same pneumatic components from his piano roll system in one of the first vote counting machines. 

The paper roll mechanism, the bellows system, and all the distinct parts were created by various inventors and craftsmen over many years, including Welte and McTammany. By the 1870s, automated piano players existed and more or less worked.

But Votey put all the pieces together in the elegant and functional Aeolian Pianola.

The Pianola quickly drew the attention of other piano manufacturers, who went to work on their own variations.

By 1924, half of all pianos sold were player pianos.

At a 1908 industry conference in Buffalo, New York that became known as the Buffalo Convention, several prominent piano roll manufacturers agreed on a universal format for 88-note player pianos. The standard roll would be 11.25 inches wide with nine holes per inch. From that point on, any roll could be played on any piano.

Famous pianists recorded works for piano rolls.

Likewise, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Scott Joplin, and Jelly Roll Morton all recorded for the player piano. Many of these can now be heard on YouTube.

While it was a long time before the formalization of the Billboard, Cashbox, and other systems, the popularity of songs was tracked by sheet music sales.

These days, piano rolls are a thing of the past.

Contemporary player pianos use MIDI files to play songs.

In the first quarter of the 20th century, it was common for families to have pianos in the home. In the evenings, people would play and sing together. With the advent of radio, and later television, piano sales started to fall. Votey lived long enough to see that, but when he passed in 1931 he knew the effect he had on the music industry.

Beyond his pipe organs still in use in churches and cathedrals, player pianos made millions of people happy, or consoled them in hard times like the Great Depression, or encouraged them to take piano lessons.

---

---

Views: 58