A MECHANICAL RUBINSTEIN.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1018, 6 April 1883, Page 2

A MECHANICAL RUBINSTEIN.

Writing of inventions reminds me that an automatic pianist has been shown this week and last to pianists and musicians, which seems to accomplish the For years there has been an automatic pianist in the market constructed upon the same principles as the oiguinette—air passing through perforations in a strip of paper and acting upon the keys. But these pianos play like machines, without any expression worth mentioning, and are fit for nothing except to dance by if players are not to be had. The new piano, an invention by Mr Gaily, known as an inventor of a good printing press, aims at nothing else than the reproduction of a pianist’s style, expression and brilliancy. The apparatus, the construction of which is kept a secret, is contained in a long box which fits over the keyboard of the piano. A roll of paper, not more than a foot wide, perforated with holes the size of a pin head is placed in the machine, and when air is pumped in the piano begins to play. Only two pieces of music are ready as yet, one of them Liszt’s second Hungarian rhapsody, a difficult piece, in which the difficulties have been doubled by putting all the runs into octaves instead of single notes. I heard the machine play these pieces last week, and therejis a wonderful expression and brilliancy about the performance. The price of one of these wonders is to be SOOdol when they are ready for the market, which may not be for the next year. The music will not cost as much as ordinary sheet music, and may be used over and over again.—American Bulletin,