Roll Scanning- A New Adventure
Recently, I was able to acquire a partially-built device to scan piano rolls, preserving them as electronic files similar to paper pages saved by ordinary (and very common) flat bed scanners.
In November, 2006, I was introduced to a group of folks who are endeavoring to preserve as much as possible of the legacy of the piano and organ roll manufacturers of the past century. As you might realize, the heyday of the player piano was the era from about 1905 until about 1930, and even the newest of the original production rolls are 50 years old, and nearing the end of their useful life.
Warren Tractman has a website, http://www.trachtman.org/, in which he explains all of this much better than I can, and also has a whole lot of information on building the devices that folks are using to scan these old rolls, and the Yahoo site http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Rollscanners/ is an information motherlode for anyone interested in the preservation of these historical artifacts.
I'll be posting more about this new adventure as I get the scanner nearer to completion. As of right now, most of the hard stuff is finished, and most of what I still have to do is assemble several dozen parts and do a lot of wiring. Photos will accompany my project, as well as scans of the 1500+ rolls that I have in my own collection for the various instruments.
Stay tuned! The good stuff is yet to come!