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By Betsy J. Green
100 years ago, folks didn’t have radios in their homes yet, but you could make your own music with a mechanical piano. In April 1919, Brown’s Music House at 718 State Street was selling Player Piano rolls.
A player piano roll was a length of paper wound around a wooden spindle. As the paper was unwound and moved to an empty spindle, holes in the paper caused a mechanism in the player piano to touch a key and play a note. (If you’re old enough to remember IBM punch cards, this concept may sound familiar to you, but of course, IBM punch cards are fast becoming ancient history as well.)
Betsy’s Way Back When book — 1918 — is now available in local bookstores and at Amazon.com. This is the fifth book in her series of the history of Santa Barbara, one year at a time. Learn more at
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