The Grand Piano Series

The History of The Robot

The Robot is sometimes referred to as the Stonehill-Iles Robot, since Gerald Stonehill and Gordon Iles both worked on its creation, but the greater credit must, according to Gerald, go to Gordon Iles, an exceptional genius, and, latterly, inventor and chief-theoretician for the Aeolian Company in London.

It happened that the London branch of the Aeolian Company had come onto the Duo-Art recording scene six years later than New York. Intense trans-Atlantic training was required to bring London into line with the American standard of excellence, but it was impractical for William Creary Woods, the New York Recording Development Executive, to spend much time outside the States. Eventually, though, Gordon Butler Iles turned up at the London office. His impact can be appreciated if one just mentions the fact that Gordon single-handedly invented the Silloth pilot trainer during the war, made from reproducing-piano parts plus some further items of his own design, which helped to win the Battle of Britain by training pilots for all designs of British war-plane. The better-known Link trainer in America was built by the Link Piano Company, who sent their engineers to England to learn from Gordon how to construct such a device!

When considering the objectives behind the construction of the Stonehill-Iles Robot, a number of factors have to be considered. In Duo-Art terms it has to be taken into account that the Aeolian Company had specially equipped Duo-Art pianos for public concerts - and for the recording artists to hear their own recordings for approval. Exhibitions were staged for example with Cortot playing behind a curtain and the piano playing in front, alternating with him, but visible on stage. Eminent critics could not tell which was which during the performance. However, there were extra perforations on the rolls, activating booster pumps, different from anything that customers could purchase.

What was sold to the public was distinct for good reasons. Ladies, for instance, did not care to host fff concert performances in their boudoirs. What they had was splendid, but not 'the full Monty'. Moreover, the Duo-Art system requires increasing suction to deal with increasing loudness, and salon Duo-Art pianos did not have the capacity to deal with too high a demand. They were already using some of the available suction to run the roll-motor, (which incidentally affected roll speed on very long rolls, where torque was diminished as paper build-up increased the effective diameter of the drive spool). Salon grand pianos, one must add, use a half-blow for the soft pedal (like uprights) instead of the una-corda side-shift of a normal grand which would have required even more suction.

Aeolian, New York, recognised the problems of volume production and of roll-speed weakness. In 1925 they installed a crash valve in American Duo-Art grand pianos to cope with fff demand. Then, in 1933, they substituted, in grands, electric (instead of pneumatic) roll-drive and less-wasteful suction design, combined with a slicker tracking device, to reduce distortion of rolls during playing. Nothing however was changed as far as pedal operation was concerned and in the aftermath of the 1929 Depression no more improvements were marketed.

Since Gerald Stonehill already had amassed the largest collection of Duo Art rolls in the world, he came under great pressure to make archive recordings for the BBC, as well as LPs for commercial interests. He did the BBC work, but deferred making transfers to disc until he could overcome the limitations of the average Duo-Art piano. At the same time he was also asked to lend his pianos for public performance. But, every time the pianos were moved, they were damaged, and his services were not rewarded sufficiently to compensate for repairs.

He soon acquired from America the latest mechanisms associated with the electric-drive super-models, and Iles and he discussed how to make a mobile Vorsetzer, which could resolve all the problems. Perfect reproduction had long been Gordon's main obsession, and his own piano already incorporated prototype new inventions of his own devising. Iles announced that he would co-operate in the venture on two conditions. 1. 'That the sky was the limit!' 2. That the "brain" of the virtual computer inside should be an entirely original design, to overcome variations from concert standards.

This Gerald agreed to.

So, they ended up with a decoder that could play any piano anywhere, that incorporated the 1933 roll-handling devices of Aeolian America, that used the pedals just as a live pianist does, and that had a computerised range of dynamics that could not vary with stretchy leather or variable springs, and that would be equally competent in ppp and fff passages. The first question that the Nimbus producers asked Gerald, when they heard The Robot, as he called it, was, "Why is it that one can hear the different tone of different pianists?" The answer of course was that all of these improvements made The Robot the Duo-Art reproducing piano par excellence. A pianist's tone is also, of course, heavily influenced by pedalling - and here, in The Robot, we had, uniquely, a mechanism capable of translating the pedalling instructions on a roll into the correct physical action of a grand piano.

For twelve years The Robot made public appearances in the Festival Hall complex, promoted both by the Player Piano Group and by the founders of the Pianola Institute, since it gave support to demonstrations of comparative Reproducing Piano systems and subsidised the appearance of human player-pianists on stage. It was also called on by the Percy Grainger and other Music Societies to demonstrate the playing of their heroes/heroines.

Understandably, there was disappointment when The Robot was withdrawn from this circuit, due to limitations of Gerald's own time and energy. But more conventional mechanisms were soon substituted by the organisers on stage, so that the promotions could continue. Eventually, The Robot re-emerged, making transfers onto CD for Nimbus. Now it was possible for a wider public to hear for themselves what had made The Robot such a feature on the South Bank stages.

The Player Piano Group, in 1999, acknowledged the contribution that the Nimbus transfers had made to their speciality by conferring honorary membership on their onetime vice-president, Gerald Stonehill. Additional plaudits came from The Penguin Guide to Excellence in Recorded Classical Music, which cited some of the Nimbus transfers. In 1997 NPR's Performance Today had already nominated the Nimbus transfer of Debussy Piano Works (NI8807) for the Heritage Award (which honours the previous year's recording that most helps foster appreciation of classical music and artists).