MUSICA MECANICA
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An MBSI Musical Museum
Grosse collection/Large Museum/Grosse Sammlung
Dozens of mechanical musical items including a broad selection of disc & cylinder type musical boxes, small organs toys and reproducing piano.
Five rooms of instruments donated and loaned by members of the Musical Box Society International.
Edison phonograph, 2 gramophones, 43 Victor talking machines and Victrolas, 15,000 Victor records
Grosse collection/Big collection/Grosse Sammlung
Not in MBSI Listing
Twelve instruments including Seeburg style E’ ’KT’ Special ’L’ & orchestrion ; Mills Violin ; Wurlitzer band organ Model 125, Regina Hexaphones, Regina changer ; Nelson-Wiggens, Coinola, National Calliope
Owned by the Federal Government
Musical boxes which are occasionally on display ; piano, Grand Harmonicon and musical instruments
Early American gadget and novelties, including Wurlitzer ’LX’ orchestrion, & 150 band organ, Double Mills Violano, Coinola Midget, Link ’2E’,
and Seeburg ’G’ & ’KT’ orchestrions, also Artizan band organ, Tangley ’CA-43’ Calliope, and Western Electric orchestrion and others
Founded in 1913, a general museum on arts, science and history
It houses since Nov. 2004 the exceptionnal worldwide well known Guinness Collection (ca 700 items) of Mechanical music instruments and automata (with especially many rare musical boxes).
Some are exhibited now (please ask), but a new wing is under construction to house and show the whole collection. The opening is scheduled for 2006.
Open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. ; Thursday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. ; and Sunday 1-5 p.m.
Admission to the museum is $7 for adults and $5 for children, students and senior citizens.
Admission is always free for museum members and is free to the public every Thursday between 1 and 8 p.m.
The West Orange home and laboratory where Thornas Edison lived and worked from 1887 to 1931
National Park Service.
Laboratory tours are given daily from 10:30am-3:30pm.
Tours of Edison’s home, Wedn.-Sun., 11am-4pm.
Visitor’s Center open daily, access beyond the center is by guided tour only.
There are currently 3 organettes on display, all late 19th cent.
The collection contains a total ol 12 mechanical music machines, 5 organettes, 1 street organ, 5 cylinder music boxes, and 1 disc music box.
This is a fine local collection documenting musical life in western New York (18th cent. to 1930s).
A player piano, a Nickelodeon, several phonos and parlor organs and a large Wurlitzer Theater Pipe Organ (concerts)
Seven instruments on display including Symphonion, 3 disc musical clock, 15 1/2’ Polyphon, Mermod cylinder box, Edison disc phono, Clariona, Polyphon upright, Seeburg 1910
Pianos : Six player and reproducing pianos, and piano roil perforating and recording equipment including new computerized storage and control systems for perforating rolls.
Two tours dally, at l0am & 2pm only, Mon.-Fri. except holidays.
Adults $2, Children $1, redeemable with purchase.
(Sorry, no facilities for the handicapped.)
Over 100 instruments : Nickelodeons, band organs, Caliola, street barrel organs, German organs, and other interesting antiques.
Regina music box (with quarter slot), a large cylinder music box (formerly owned by Milton Hershey) on exhibit.
Collection of other mechanical musical instruments include a barrel organ reed organs, organettes and various disc and cylinder players.
Accessible by appointment only for research or other scholarly purposes only.
Open daily except New Years Day, Thanksgiving & Christmas, Memorial Day, Labor Day, l0am-6pm ; 10am-5pm the rest of year.
Frati organ playing Artizan rolls, August Berni (Bruder) playing original book music, Wurlitzer 185 (factory conversion of De Kleist barrel organ), 146B (factory conversion of a Bruder barrel organ),
Wurlitzer Caliola, Tangley Calliaphone, coin piano.
A national Museum ot tools and the American System’ of manufacturing the original 1846 Robbins & Lawrence Armory (a registered National Historic Landmark)
Cylinder and disc music boxes, phonographs, miniatures, automaton, small organ
Several mechanical musical instruments are demonstrated in the café (Welte orchestrion and automatic changing Regina disc music box), and in the Museum galleries (especially reproducing pianos).
There is also a Hersshell carrousel (ca 1940) in front of the old Arts and Industries Building, right opposite the Museum of American History, and a very large orchestra cylinder music box inside this building.
