Inventor Thomas McKee was a citizen of Great Britain who lived in Portland, Oregon and New York City during the early 1900s and received two patents relating to automatic player pianos.
The first of these patents was United States Patent 1,398,107, which primarily concerned the operation of perforated sheet music for automatic player pianos. The second patent was United States Patent 1,580,438, which involved the device that maneuvered the perforated piano sheet music through the piano. Though not a musician and apparently unable to read music, McKee wrote a book titled The Language of Music, which utilized research materials, including those obtained from Carroll Brent Chilton. McKee had been in contact with Chilton, a member of the Audible Music Text Society and the Aeolian Company, as well as the author of The De-Assification of Music (1922) since the 1920s. McKee's own book described how music was inaccessible to those not trained in music and then explained how a new player piano could become a teaching tool for the masses. The book also served as a business prospectus designed to present his new designs for the player piano and solicit interest in his designs. His attempts were apparently unsuccessful. In 1932, McKee wrote several letters attempting to interest buyers in "Vit-O-Weat" and "Wole-O-Weat" cereals sealed and then cooked in their cans in order to preserve minerals and chemical elements.
From the description of Thomas McKee papers, 1890-1933. (New York Public Library). WorldCat record id: 122687172
