About 130 years ago, the job of pianist was automated when Edwin Votey created the first player piano. The machine worked by reading music that was encoded by holes punched into rolls of paper, which in turn directed airflows to levers that depressed piano keys. The human’s task was relegated to pumping a foot pedal to create the pneumatic pressure that drove the automaton. Things got worse for the human pianist from there. By the early 1900s, player pianos had evolved to more fully reproduce a