Books › The Story of the violano-virtuoso : world's only self-playing violin and piano, 1900 › scan 19
Scan 19
The Story of the violano-virtuoso : world's only self-playing violin and piano, 1900
22 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 13. See the scan on archive.org.
1Violins Must Be "Trained"
3A new violin is a bugaboo to any real musician. The instrument must be trained to give the full rich tones of which it is capable. In former times master violin makers employed musicians by the day to sit for hours and play their fiddles in order to age them properly. In every violin there are about fifty different pieces of wood and before all can become properly "sympathized" so that they will vibrate in unison, a certain amount of correct playing is required.
5Our violins are not entrusted to a more or less indifferent player for this aging—each instrument is given its preliminary training on the Violano-Virtuoso itself. Thus the violin gets many days of technically correct playing before it is put on the market. When your instrument reaches you, its tone is pure and mellow, and all suggestion of harshness removed.
7How the Violin Operates
9The violin in the Mills Violano does all alone what a thinking human being, educated for years in musical practice, can do with a violin, a bow, his hands, and the rest of his body.
11It does its own bowing, its own fingering, its expressioning, its starting and stopping. It has its own individuality just as has the human violinist. To do what it does, one would imagine, would require an intricate, complicated mechanism with a vast number of parts.
13As a matter of fact the instrument is a marvel of simplicity both in construction and in operation.
15"I also take great pleasure in opening the instrument, showing just how it is operated."
16—W. M. SMITH,
17Owensboro, Ky.
19"If the Violano had never taken in a penny, it would still be worth the investment as a drawing card for our business."
20—A. E. CONDEE,
21Mount Stirling, Ill.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.