Taylorist Typists on the Pianoforte

Pertinent to IT's disquisition on women, machines and noise a while ago: just come across the following on the young women typists of Weimar Berlin, in Siegfried Kracauer's The Salaried Masses (1930):

The fact that they are so fond of placing girls in front of machines is due, among other things, to the innate dexterity of the young creatures - which natural gift, is however, too widely distributed alas, to warrant a high rate of pay. When the middle classes were still in a state of prosperity, many girls who now punch cards used to stumble through etudes at home on the pianoforte. Music at least has not entirely vanished from (the rationalised office). No, it has not quite gone. I know of one industrial plant that hires girls straight from school with a salary and lets them be trained at the typewriter by a teacher of their own. The wily teacher winds up a gramophone and the pupils have to type in time with the tunes. When merry military marches ring out, they all march ahead twice as lightly. The rotation speed of the record is gradually increased, and without the girls really noticing it they type faster and faster. In their training years they turn into speed typists - music has wrought the cheaply purchased miracle.