[ The product and company names weren't always consistent in their
 [ literature, but usually (according to Billings Rollography, Vol. 6),
 [   Tel-Electric = the company name; 
 [   Telelectric = the 65-note system;
 [   Telektra = the 88-note expression system. 
 [ -- Robbie 

In regard to Mr. Krall's recent inquiry regarding the Tel-Electric Co.
recording artist Howard Lee Earnshaw, I went through my old (fairly 
extensive) files on Tel-Electric and came up with the following.  

Howard Lee Earnshaw was a local boy from Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  
He was born in 1889 and went to work for Tel-Electric in 1907 (what 
he did there, I have no idea).  He came from a family of wall paper 
hangers and painters.  

He must have had some great musical potential since he left Pittsfield
the following year and went for a number of years to the New England
Conservatory of Music.  When he graduated (around 1913), he returned
to Pittsfield, got married and spent the rest of his life there.  He
was a music teacher (piano and organ) and had various dance bands and
played in the movie theatres there, and even did Vaudeville.  He died
in 1961.

There is a good possibility that he did contract work, arranging rolls 
for Tel-Electric, or even possibly did some recordings for them at their 
New York studio (or possibly they had a recorder set up in Pittsfield).  
The actual head of recording was the musician Alfred Uley Brander.

The history of the Tel-Electric Company is very interesting and has 
been overlooked.  Supposedly they made over 10,000 units in their 12 
years of existence (basically 1905-1917).  What did them in at the 
end (according to contemporary sources) was the inability to purchase 
the brass for making the rolls after the USA entered WW1.  They tried 
paper rolls (I have had a few over the years, but they were a failure).  
They did some defense work at the end but, after the war, they found 
out everyone wanted radio, not their players.  

Wallace Reed, who was the inventor and factory superintendent, made
about 10 exotic Telelectric organ players, but they turned out to be
too expensive for the market, and with that Tel-Electric came to an end.

Glenn Grabinsky