TL;DR: We break down the inner workings of a 19th-century mechanical player piano using modern IT terms, and discover why a self-playing piano is actually a mechanical 88-bit processor.
Remember those old Western movies? A sheriff walks into a saloon, faces around look grim, and in the corner, a piano is playing all by itself—the keys moving as if pressed by a ghost. That's a pianola (or self-playing piano). Back in the day, people genuinely wondered: what kind of "devilish machine" is this? How does it even work? How can a lifeless object perform complex musical pieces?
As it turns out, inside this machine lie the exact same fundamental principles that power the CPU in your computer or phone today. And it all starts with air.
Taming Air: How It Works
Inside a pianola, you'll find the same strings and hammers as a regular piano. But instead of human fingers, it's air pressure doing the heavy lifting.
