> From: geoffhale@beeb.net (Geoff Hale)
> To: editor@foxtail.com
>
> I have found reference, in a newspaper article dated 1905,
> to a 'Augelus' or 'Angelus' piano player, both names are used
> in the article so I guess the writer wasn't sure what it was
> called.  The instrument was presumably a 'push-up player';
> it was used to demonstrate a new piano that had been delivered
> to a Church in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, UK.
>
> Regards
> Geoff Hale


 [ I forwarded this letter from Geoff to Dan Wilson, remarking,
 [ "The brand (marque) 'Angelus' was used in several contexts
 [ and not consistently applied.  In different eras it referred
 [ to a push-up player, a reed organ, and also an expression or
 [ reproducing piano system (Artrio Angelus)."  -- Robbie

Geoff,  To add to Robbie Rhodes' remarks, from the date this is
indeed one of the pushup 65-note piano players, although I think
Angelus "inner players" did start production in about 1905.

The Angelus make was characterized by having diaphragm note pneumatics
instead of bellows and a tilting "tablet" style of tempo control.  I've
never met anyone able to work it properly except the late Edgar Carpen-
ter, who had an Angelus-fitted Winkelmann grand.  The rolls played
upwards rather than downwards, but when turned round backwards and
reversed on the spools, they play perfectly well on other makes of
push-up (except that you then can't read the dynamic markings).

Around that date there was also a "Symphony" push-up.  This was an
Angelus push-up with (I think) a three-rank reed organ in the same
case.  There's one of these, not yet restored, at the Rye Treasury of
Mechanical Music, and there was one in pieces about a year ago at the
Pianola Shop in Brighton (which, if the work they're doing for me is
any guide, will still be in pieces now).  The "Symphony" had specially-
packaged rolls which were ordinary 65-note Angelus ones in rather fine
black crocodile-skin effect boxes.

An article by Rex Lawson in "The Pianola Journal", No. 11, 1998,
although actually about a competitor the Aeolian Company, has some
information about Wilcox & White of Meriden, Connecticut, the makers
of the Angelus at around that time.  Julian Dyer has researched that
period and should also be in possession of more information about them.

A pioneering instrument similar to the Angelus "inner player" upright
was hand-built by the player entrepreneur and inventor Melville Clark
in 1895, years before any others were built.  This was a 65-note
instrument, and photographs and published drawings showed large
diaphragm note pneumatics.  I had earlier thought this was an actual
forerunner of the Angelus, but apparently, while Clark went on to make
an 88-note pushup of similar pattern called the Apollo, it was a quite
isolated development.

Hope this is some help.

Dan Wilson