Edwin S. Votey

Biography

Edwin S. Votey was the inventor of a pneumatic piano-playing attachment marketed under the name "Pianola." According to Dolge, Votey filed his patent application on January 25, 1897, and was granted the patent on May 22, 1900. The Pianola was pushed onto the market by an aggressive advertising campaign conducted by its manufacturer, the Aeolian Company of New York, and its popularity helped supersede earlier, unwieldy interior "cabinet player" devices. Dolge also illustrates Votey's related "Cabinet Player" mechanism and notes that Votey's patented approach differed markedly from the contemporaneous White-Parker patents, describing the three men as inventors who worked, at the same time, on entirely different lines to accomplish the same goal of automating piano performance. Votey is credited in the text with having perfected the Pianola, the automatic piano-playing device that Harry B. Tremaine subsequently built into a major commercial enterprise. Votey is named among the able men, along with Perkins and Kelly, whose services Tremaine secured in building the best player pianos. A portrait of Votey accompanies the text.

Highlights

• Invented a pneumatic piano attachment marketed under the name "Pianola"
• Filed his patent application January 25, 1897; patent issued May 22, 1900
• His patents were contrasted with the differing "White-Parker" approach to the same problem
• Perfected the Pianola, which Harry B. Tremaine then exploited commercially
• Named among the able men (with Perkins and Kelly) whose services Tremaine secured

Source

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), p. 149.

Public domain.