Craig Brougher wrote in Digest 961219:

> The old-fashioned way of putting words on rolls [by stencil] seems to
> be, so far, the only way that anybody can do it. ... as a result, all
> the great old popular music of the teens, twenties, and thirties is
> still lost -- that is, if the words are lost.

Craig, I hear you. Fortunately, the lyrics to many songs are _not_
lost forever, thanks to continuing efforts to preserve 78-rpm recordings.
However, your point still stands: a roll without the words is incomplete.

(Similarly, phono recordings of automatic musical instruments
playing word rolls without a vocalist are also missing something
important.  Thus, my otherwise enjoyable Biograph LP's of famous old
rolls are lacking in this regard.)

A few years ago I got a rubber-stamp set as a gift, which to me was a
solution in search of a problem.  I thought of making a king-sized daisy-
wheel printer using the stamps, but I had nothing to _use_ it for, hence,
no progress.  Now I realize that it could be possible to print words on
piano rolls, with the addition of a roll feed mechanism and a means of
synchronizing the roll with the printing operation (a shaft encoder on
the take-up spool, presumably).

However, this talk of waxed paper rolls is troubling.  Yes, it is true,
I've never seen such a thing.  I guess that means I'm rather out of touch.
Oh well, so it goes.  Still, it sounds like a project worth working on,
when working on the Karn reaches a lull.

Colin Hinz