Dear MMDs,  I save and sort the MM Digests I receive in Microsoft Word
documents, each document saving half a month (1-15 and 16-30 or -31).
That allows using the very fast "Find" command of Word software.

The second fortnight of January totals circa 522,000 characters, which
is the equivalent of a standard book of 250 pages.  It is the largest
fortnight since the beginning of the MMD.  The second one in size was
the second fortnight of March 1998 (518,000 characters).

Since the beginning of the MMD, a rough estimate shows that all the
Digests total between 25 and 28 million characters, the equivalent of
about 3 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or 15 times all the
texts and captions of the Bowers Encyclopedia !

Of course, there is much "blah blah blah" in the Digests, but if only
10 per cent should remain for posterity, it is already an incredible
sum of knowledge on mechanical music and its instruments.

And, last but not the least, may I tell once again my total admiration
for the work of those who manage with "maestria" this mailing list:
I mean mainly Robbie Rhodes and Jody Kravitz.

Bravo and long life to our editors !

Best regards,

Philippe Rouille  (Paris, France)
http://www.cnam.fr/museum/musica_mecanica/

 [ I think 'maestria' means 'skill' or 'authority', but I have
 [ as little authority as the next guy at MMD: Jody!  ;)
 [
 [ Jody just now created zip-files for each month of MMD; the
 [ file size is 200 kb to 390 kb typically.  Using the web browser
 [ you can retrieve the file for December 1999, for example, at
 [ ftp://mmd.foxtail.com/pub/mechanical-music/digests.dos/9912/
 [ Look for 9912.zip (285 kb).  -- Robbie