The uselessness of our mechanical music hobby.  What a loaded title!
Before I go any further, I should note what prompted me to ponder this
question.  The cue came from the nature classic book, "A Sand County
Almanac" by Aldo Leopold.  In one chapter, the author briefly digresses
from his thoughts on nature to ponder about hobbies.

   "You do not annex a hobby, the hobby annexes you.  To prescribe a
  hobby would be dangerously akin to prescribing a wife with about the
  same probability of a happy outcome...

    "What is a hobby anyway?  Where is the line of demarcation between
  hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? ... A satisfactory hobby must
  be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant...
  A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary.  It is an assertion of
  those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution
  have contravened or overlooked.  If this is true, then we may also
  say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical. ...

    "It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational
  justification.  To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial
  converts it at once from an avocation into an industry--lowers it at
  once to ignominious category of an "exercise" undertaken for health,
  power, or profit."

As Leopold stated, "You do not annex a hobby, the hobby annexes you."
What then, has attracted us to the mechanical music hobby and keeps us
intrigued?  What is it that is so fascinating about these odd devices?
A person who views the world strictly in economic or practical terms
would deem these machines as frivolous and unnecessary.  If it doesn't
contribute to food, shelter, or bettering one's income, then it must
have no value.  How then, do we justify these "frivolous" machines to
non-believers?

I do not totally agree with Leopold that "to find reasons why [a hobby]
is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an
industry..."  The exercise of contemplation or introspection or has
become passe.  Those who engage in this activity often feel obliged to
apologize for doing so.  However, after musing on the subject for a
period of time (with no apology), I contemplated the following ideas.

Mechanical music machines provide us with a certain amount of mental
challenge.  Human curiosity about an object sparks a quest for
knowledge.  How does it work?  What is the origin?  Are there more like
it?  Are they the same or different?  And so forth.  The machines keep
us alert by constantly providing us with new challenges.  Is there
anyone among us who has not faced the perplexing dilemma of getting an
obstinate player piano, organ, music box or other machine to work?  We
learn what methods work and what doesn't work.  There is gratification
in finally solving a puzzle that has confronted us for some time.

In the case of mechanical music, our satisfaction becomes more than
just project completion.  We take pride in seeing the keys, bellows,
gears, crankshafts, and other mechanical parts operate in an efficient
manner.  The reward for our hard work is hearing the machine play its
music.

Each person has his or her own reason(s) for amassing and restoring
these machines.  Some collect them merely to impress others.  However,
there is also historical and societal value in preserving and
maintaining these machines from the past.  They provide us with clues
as to how people lived at the time they were made.  We learn about
their technology, musical tastes, and social values.

Our hobby is a labor of love.  Why else spend an inordinate about of
money on something that will not provide us good monetary return?  We
enjoy and preserve these machines because "a satisfactory hobby must be
in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant."  No
further justification is needed.

Joyce Brite - Player Piano and Mechanical Music Exchange
http://mmd.foxtail.com/Exchange/