Machine To Type Music—Australian Invention

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 82, 16 August 1948, Page 5

Machine To Type Music—Australian Invention

A young . Caulfield musician and -composer is awaiting final ,patent . approval for a recent invention —a machine which types music, states . a Melbourne message. ' ■ .7 He is Mr. Murray Parker, 31-year- . old variety music librarian of the Australian Broadcasting Commisr. sion who, some years ago. became - tired of copying music by hand and ■ decided to invent a machine to do the job. In his home workshop he evolved . a cumbersome contraption in wood, in which the striking letter .pieces were carved from wooden piano Tliammers. It was too big and not «quite accurate, so he remodelled it

in steel and patented the idea. More ideas came and the music-ian-mechanic made a third machine. This is the one: now awaiting patent. It is about a yard wide, long and deep. It has two keyboards. One' of 42 keys is for letters and music symbols and the other, of 27 keys, for bringing tile paper to the appropriate position for typing. It can type backwards, forwards, vertically, horizontally and diagonally. If desired, it' can produce symbols half the normal size and handle everything from the simple air of “Three Blind Mice” to the complex fingerwork of Liszt and Bach.