MAKING STREET ORGANS
A COMPLICATED PROFESSION . Tucked away in the loft of a little two-hundred-years-old' house, within a stone's throw of Ilolborn, is the oldest street-organ factory in the world. Here lives Mr Pesarcsi, who is one of London's few remaining street-organ manufacturers. "The most difficult part of my work is* 'writing' the music," says Mr Pesaresi. "My 'score' is a wooden roller bristling with thousands of steel pins." This roller is covered with white paper on which the positions of the notes are pricked with a steel scribe. Hard steel pins are then punched into these places with a hammer worked by a foot treadle-. The skill and patience required for this work tin be gauged from the fact that a 4ft roller holds ten different tunes made up of as manv as 25,000 notes. Complicated as it seems, the working of a street organ is really quite simple, not unlike that of an ordinary upright piano. The chief difference is that the keys are dispensed with and the "finger work performed by the steel pins striking the hammers as the roller revolves
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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 23 July 1929, Page 5
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184MAKING STREET ORGANS Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 23 July 1929, Page 5
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