Hole Punching

 The posting on Friday showed the paper/card being punched by an automatic machine, nowadays controlled by a computer. A friend of mine, John who actually only lives a couple of roads away, has built an automatic punch similar to this.

 Of course, it cannot read music, it cannot arrange the tune to fit the scale of the organ.... all this has to be done manually and then the instructions fed into the computer to control the punch.

 It does, however, have the advantage of being able to run off multiple copies.

 I am still in the "old world" of punching my tunes by hand. The holes are punched by an electrical solenoid but the positioning of the punch and the movement of the paper is all done manually.

This shows my punch in operation, half way through "After the Ball was Over".

It takes quite a long time to punch a tune. I usually do it in two or three stages and of course it depends on the length of the music. I can punch around 4 metres in an hour, so a typical tune would take about two to three hours.