When I was starting out as a piano technician in 1972, my first job
was with the Aeolian Corporation.  I worked out of their headquarters
building on West 57th Street in New York.  My first day on the job I
was shown around the building, which included about 5 floors of piano
showrooms, some offices, and finally I was taken to the top floor and
introduced to an unassuming black man, Mr. Cook, who was working at
some strange instrument that sort of looked like a piano, but had a lot
of weird attachments and was placed in the wall between two rooms.
He explained to me how he used this contraption to make piano rolls.
He was very friendly and gracious.

I was completely ignorant of player pianos at the time, and it was only
a couple of years later, when I had the opportunity to work on players
and began to see piano rolls with the name "J. Lawrence Cook" on them,
that I realized I had met the man and seen the place where these rolls
were made!

Larry Lobel
Virtuoso Piano Service
Petaluma, California