US1166618A - Method of making perforated music-sheets. - Google Patents

Description

P. J. MEAHL.

METHOD OF MAKING PERFORATED MUSIC SHEETS.

APPLICATION FILED AUGJB. 1914.

1,166,618. Pafnted Ja11.4, 1916.

In men tor:

COLUMBIA PLANOGRAPH Co., WASHINGTON, n. c

' 'fication. v

U TED srarns PHILIP if. MEAHL, or snlvnurr, new JERSEY.

METHODOF MAKING PERFOIRATED MUsIG sl-lEETs'.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Jan. 4, 1916.

Application fi s August s, 1914. Serial No. 857,331.

State of New Jersey, have invented certain v new and useful Improvements in the Method of Making Perforated Music- Sheets, of which the following is a speci- T his invention relates to c the method of making a master sheet for perforating such sheet in quantities forthe trade, which master sheet contains a record of manual playing, the perforations of which master sheet are so adjusted or rectified so as to adapt the use ofsuch master sheet in a mechanically controlled machine cal use, all of which will be described in detail hereinafter. Q h

In the accompanying drawings in which like letters of reference indicate'like parts in all the figuresz-Figure 1 is a, face'view of the record sheet made automatically by manual playing and by an automatic recording machine, parts being broken away.

Fig. 2 is a similar view of a copy of the said sheet as I'GCtIfiGCl, parts being broken awav.

In making the master sheet according to i 7 my new and improved method, a musical composition is first played by a skilled pianist on a piano which is connectedwith an automatic recording machine which contalns mechanisms for actually recording' or perforating on a moving sheet every key stroke made by the pianist, which record marks correspond to the length of time a correct visual record of each key'depressed and of the time it has remained depressed. This record is made upon a sheet of paper 1 which is provided at its marginal edge with openings 2 into which teeth or cogs of sprockets pass so that the sheet 1 is fed uniformly and always in i a straight lineertaih new as j useful improvements in the method of making perforated music sheets, particularlyto for making copies of the same for practi- I sheet is likewise preferably provided with transverse equidistant lines 4, which lines with the longitudinal lines form squares?) 1I1 Wl11Ch the punchings are to be made. The punclnngs are formed between the longitudinal lines 3 as the paper cannot diverge laterally and no slipping is possible on account of the engagement of the paper wlth the sprocket teeth but it is practically impossible for a human being to strike the keys with suchabsolute precision that the punchings will be exactly in the correct positions 1 Pianists have more or less idiosyncrasies and peculiarities in touch and so forth, which they use for the purpose of bringing out the expression and their interpretation of the composition and furthermore it is almost impossible for the pianists, especially when playing rapidly, to strike the successive notes of a trill or a rapid succession of the same note with such regularity that the punches will appear in the correct positions.

. It will be found in practice that in'such an automatically produced record of manual .playing, the punchings representing a series of notes struck in succession, will not be the same distance apart and there will be considerable variation; This is absolutely un- I 'avoidable, but such a sheet cannot be used for the mechanical reproduction of copies because the machlnes for reproduclng such record or mak ng copies in quantity are I .p'urely mechanical and are dependent upon having the individual perforations or beginnings of slots in the master sheet spaced with exactness in accordance with the "strokes of the means for operating the punches in the duplicating machine and be- Lotus ih'd l' t' l' key 1s held depressed, so as toproduce a q mgmacnnes are Pro vided with selector devices which make a predetermined series of strokes per unit of time and the selectors can only properly select if the paper is moved in exact accordance with the strokes of the selector mechanismand the perforations have the proper positions in relation to the feed of the'master sheet. The record marks made automatically by the'piano player have no fixedrelation whatever to the number of steps or strokes of the mechanically operated punch controlling or selecting means of a mechanically operating duplicating machine for producing copies of such perforated sheet and unless the individual perforations or beginnings .of slots in the master Sheet have this fixed relation to the steps of the mechanically operated perforating machine, such master sheet cannot be used successfully on such reproducing machine. Therefore, after the pianist has produced the record of his manual playing in the manner that I have described and which I have indicated in Fig. 1, a skilled person makes the necessary corrections or transpositions or changes so that the record marks or punchings are in proper places and the bridges between the note slots in alinement will be of the proper size. For example,'for an eighty-eight note machine, each cut made by a punch is from one-twenty-seventh to one-thirty-second of an inch. The smallest bridge of paper permissible in the completed sheet is three-sixteenths of an inch. In order to form such bridges in the completed sheet to be used by the player, four or five cuts of the punches must be omitted for a bridge. The skilled person correcting this manual record, transposes the punchings corresponding to the beginning or end of a note slot or single punchings in their relation to the squares 5 when they have not been cut out in the exact proper position by the automatic recorder, the corrected or adjusted sheet being shown for example in Fig. 2. Such corrected sheet however cannot be used as a master sheet in a machine for making the commercial perforated note sheets because it is on too small a scale and therefore I pass this automatically made and subsequently corrected manual record sheet shown in Fig. 2, through a special perforating machine having mechanically controlled selecting means, which produces a copy on a larger scale and this enlarged copy of the adjusted and corrected automatically made record sheet of the manual playing is then used in an ordinary purely mechanical perforating machine of the well known type, used for making any number of commercial copies of commercial perforated music sheets, such as are used in the various automatic piano players now on the market, which reproducing means has a mechanically operated punch controlling or selecting device operated at regular intervals for each time unit.

Having described my invention whatI claim as new and desire to secure 'by Letters Patent is 1. The method of making copies of automatically recorded music sheets for automatic musical instruments, consisting in producing automatically a record of manual playing on a key mstrument; manually making corrections on the automatically .produced record sheet as are required for 'machine having step by step selectors and a step by 'step'feed andusing the so corrected sheet as a master sheet in a mechanically or electrically operating duplicating machine having step by step selectors and a step by step 'feed to obtain an enlarged copy of the original sheet and using this sheet just produced as a master sheet in a mechanically or electrically operating duplieating machine for making sheets commercially, substantially as set forth.

2. The method of making copies of automatically recorded music sheets for automatic musical instruments, consisting in producing automatically a record of manual playing on a key instrument; then correcting and adjusting the positions of those record marks thus produced requiring correction or change as to their position in the direction of the length of thesheet or the length of such record marks so that said record marks will coincide with the positions which they must have in order to enable them to control the operations of punches in a machine having mechanical punch controlling means which are operated at regular intervals in a unit of time and have a fixed relation to the steps for the feed of the paper; and then making an enlargement of the so adjusted or corrected record and finally using this enlarged copy ofthe record as a master sheet in a perforating .machine having 'a .mechanically operated punch controlling or selecting means, which operates a definite number of timesin each time unit and for a determined feed of the paper, substantially as set forth.

Signed at New York city, in the county of New York and State of New York this 28th day of July, A D. 1914;.

PHILIP J. MEAHL.

Witnesses:

OSCAR F. GUNZ, 'PAUL H. FRANKE.

Copies of this patent may be obtained for five cents each, byeddressing the Commissioner of Patents.

Washington,v I). C.

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