The holes passed over sprockets that caused hammers inside the pianola to strike the piano wires. And the vibrating wires produced music, much as they would in a standard piano.
Sometimes the player piano's mechanism could be rigged so that (1)_____________________________as if a ghost were sitting on the bench, playing a lively tune. Coin-operated player pianos called nickelodeons soon appeared in bars, ice-cream parlors, and poolrooms.
Customers would select a song, drop a coin into a slot and the appropriate piano roll would play the selected song. (2)_________________________________, much as they would later amass collections of records and compact discs. But as technology advanced, piano rolls and player pianos became curiosities - musty museum pieces.
And then a 108-year-old company in Buffalo, New York, called Q-R-S, the world's last mass producer of piano rolls, stopped making them. So that was the day that (3)__________________________________, in fact, die.
