For Sale: Telelectric Brass Rolls

[kendphono]

Most of us have a general interest in mechanical music. While this is not specifically phonograph related, I thought you might be interested in a variant of a player piano called the Telelectric. I am offering 4 original Telelectric rolls. They can be bought individually or as a group. $10 each or $35 for all plus shipping. Payment to be made by check, not Paypal. Please contact me at [email protected] and NOT PM>

An interesting history is provided below. Three of the four are in the original boxes. One is very early as No. 6. All of the rolls are brass not paper like a player piano. The rolls were retracted into a brass cylinder. This is a nice bit of history for the mechanical music fan.

The player piano was invented by Edwin Voltey in 1897 and was operated by pneumatics and a paper roll. The patent rights were acquired by the Aeolian Corporation in America and they marketed his design for the player piano system from 1897 onward as the Pianola. Aeolian went on to become the worlds leading manufacturer of roll operated instruments. The design was an extension of the pneumatic organettes which also used paper rolls.
The telelectric was also patented in 1897, the same year as Voltey’s player piano mechanism. The design of the Telelectric was similar in some respects to the player piano. Rather than a paper roll, it used a thin brass sheet that was also a roll. The roll contained punched holes for the notes and longer holes could be punched to provide expression to the key being played.
No pneumatics were involved in the Telelectric. It was entirely electric. The mechanism was operated by batteries. A thick cable cluster went from the controller with the brass roll to a mechanism bolted under the keyboard of a piano. It only played 63 notes of the entire 88 notes of the piano keyboard and did not play the extreme ends of the keyboard. On the mounted assembly under the keyboard, there were 63 electrical solenoids, one for each of the 63 keys. A screw from the solenoid was screwed into the bottom of each of the 63 keys of the piano. As the brass sheet played in the controller in a similar manner that the paper roller played the player piano. Every time a hole passed over the reader a contact was made that activated the solenoid. The solenoid would then pull down the key causing the piano to play that particular note. The cable from the controller of the solenoid mechanism was about 10 feet long allowing the owner to sit in a chair and control the piano and change the rolls.
There were controls in the controller to subdue, soft pedal, increase the base or treble and control the expression. The entire system cost $350 in 1900. It is not known how many were sold but less than six appear to still exist. When the playing assembly was installed on the piano, there was a large mass of wires that could be seen under the keyboard because there had to be a pair of wires for each solenoid. The player piano had a much neater appearance and would likely have been more desirable in a wealthy home.

Ken Danckaert