About

Joe Rinaudo Playing the American Fotoplayer is a viral video of American Fotoplayer musician Joe Rinaudo playing the instrument on the television series California's Gold with Huell Howser. The device allows players to play music and create sound effects for silent films.

Origin

On March 15th, 2006, Rinaudo appeared on California's Gold with Huell Howser. In the episode, Howser interviews Rinaudo, an American Fotoplayer player, who plays the instrument that would provide music and sound effects for silent films in the early part of the 20th century (shown below).^[1]

Spread

On August 18th, 2012, YouTuber ealoseey shared a clip of Rinaudo's performance with the title "VERY Unusual instrument!" The post received more than 1.7 million views in less than eight years (shown below).

In 2019, some began using the video as a reaction video. For example, Twitter user @LemonyFreshTwit shared the video with the caption "Live footage of the guy inside my brain making it run." The post received more than 1.2 million views, 55,000 likes and 19,000 retweets in less than one year (shown below).

Live footage of the guy inside my brain making it run pic.twitter.com/3BtFlvr2I6

— Steve Dorian (Commissions Open) (@LemonyFreshTwit) August 9, 2019

Various Examples

How I picture old heads producing pic.twitter.com/RDQssK2xgm

— Cxdy (@TheCxdy) August 11, 2019

JavaScript developers reinventing basic CSS pic.twitter.com/oE9OAiZcF8

— Andy Bell (@hankchizljaw) January 23, 2020

External References