Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 32. Chapters: Pneumatic tube, Player piano, Atmospheric railway, South Devon Railway Company, Prague pneumatic post, Pneumatic cylinder, London Pneumatic Despatch Company, Beach Pneumatic Transit, Pneumatics automation, Circuit theory, Crystal Palace pneumatic railway, Mekarski system, Waterloo and Whitehall Railway, Lamson Engineering Company Ltd, Air-Line Fittings, Cash carrier, British Compressed Air Society, Dalkey Atmospheric Railway, Pneumatic flow control, Pneumatic circuit, Flow limiter, Pneumatic refuse conveying system, Compressed air filters. Excerpt: A player piano (also known as pianola or autopiano) is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via the wireless in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production. The idea of automatic musical devices can be traced back many centuries. The idea of using pinned barrels to operate percussion mechanisms (such as striking bells in a clock) was perfected long before the invention of the piano. These devices were later extended to operate musical boxes, which contain a set of tuned metal teeth plucked by the player mechanism. An early musical instrument to be automated was the organ, which is comparatively easy to operate automatically. The power for the notes is provided by air from a bellows system, and the organist or player ...
