Generally regarded as one of the 8 greatest inventions of the first decade of the twentieth century, consisting of two violins with piano accompaniment playing electrically from a perforated paper roll using small celluloid wheels to bow the strings. To help the violins stay in tune an ingenius system of weights is used on the strings.
Invented by Henry Sandell, the Violano Virtuoso was manufactured by the Mills Novelty Co. between the years 1912 and 1930 in various case styles and single and double violin models. The double model plays both violins together giving a richer violin sound. The fingering is achieved by vee shaped metal fingers pushing up from underneath the strings and violin expression by varying the speed of the bow motors.
Approximately 4500 Violanos were produced and distributed on a worldwide scale, only several hundred survive today, and of these, only a few dozen are double models.
