Great to see more on the Pistonola!

Before simply accepting Richard Vance's assessment of it, however,
please consider the actual measurements and calculations I posted
in MMD 2000.03.29 > 14.  Richard was a great bloke and a fine engineer
and told me how fascinated he was by the Pistonola, but he never saw
one and based his understandable conclusions on an already deficient
description.

The concept and production design are really very clever.  The 1921
book, "The Pneumatic Player", was by Harry Drake of the well-regarded
periodical Musical Opinion, and it's worth noting he considered the
Pistonola mechanism "wonderfully responsive and noiseless and ... a
decided advance on those with which I have come in contact hitherto."

David Perry and others working on their Pistonolas and Terpretors
(Pistonolae et Terpretores?) will soon be able to tell us a lot more
about their performance and reliability.  I suspect they were somewhat
more sensitive to domestic pollution and materials degradation than
normal player mechanisms, but also that conventional player technicians
had much to answer for!

Patrick Handscombe
Wivenhoe, Essex, UK