Tim Kramer writes about his find, a metal "Rolls Royce bar set",
and asks, "Would I be able to get this information from the book,
'The Musical Box', by Ord-Hume?"

Others than I will tell you 'no', or you will find as I did that such
things have not been well documented.  At the worst someone will call
this a "Tinkle Box."

But something has stayed with me since the 1991 MBSI annual meeting.
At a lecture the founder of the San Francisco Musical Box Company
announced that, just before he sold the company, the annual sales
in USA of this sort of box was nearly half a billion dollars ($500M).
At this time, companies like Apple Computer or the engineering firm
I was working at had revenues of 10 billion or 120 million per year.

I kept hearing the name of Guido Reuge.  I had never heard of Reuge
before.  I heard he made Swiss music boxes.  All I know about Swiss
music boxes was that my grandmother's powder case said Thorens on
it when I took it apart and cut my finger on the governor release.
Everything new said Sanyo.  After the 1991 MBSI annual meeting
I started actively looking for the words Reuge.  I still get a shudder
when I think of the governor release or the spring exploding, but my
desire to learn all I could about automata and what frightened me held
forth.

When one thinks about it, music boxes are the epitome and definition
of the rose motif in "Beauty and the Beast."  Even a small music box
spring can bite hard.  (The big springs seem positively lethal; has
anyone actually ever been killed by one of these?  I know of people
being maimed by exploding springs.  Could this be why there is no
"Idiot's Guide to Tinkelboxes," or "Tinkelboxes for Dummies?"

(Note, I call mass marketed kitsch a "Tinklebox."  A real musical box
must have a cylinder of at least an inch and a half an lots of tines.
I would rather these be called "cartel" or "cylinder" boxes.  However,
in conversation I tend to call disc machines "cylinder boxes" or
"changers."  Most importantly is a "musical box" is, well, a musical
box and should not be called or confused with anything else.)

With automata selling in the 10s of thousands, people started writing
books about them.  This was a "safe" way of understanding what is
inside of something like a watch.  Mostly, though, these books deal
with the "heads of the "dolls" and are desired for the appearance
rather than the music.  However, many movements are in the old doll
books listed under "Music boxes with dolls."  The only magazine is
"Hobbies", which reported articles by Chapuis, called the Automata.

Yes, these little "tinkle boxes" sell for only a few dollars each.
The manufacturers have no desire to promote them.  Collectors focus on
the case, as Tim has done.  There is no desire to catalog something
with productions in the millions.  People collect them for what they
represent, rather than what they are.

Recently, after nearly 20 years of looking, I got a Lambert automata
doll to restore.  The movement was missing.  I saw advertised on eBay
an older, circa 1900, harp music box.  I ordered this and some other
"vintage" boxes to see if I could come up with an appropriate movement
for my doll.

These were like no other "cheap" movements I had seen.  They were
marked Thorens, Switzerland.  The spring barrel was held on by screws
rather than rivets.  This got me thinking why had I hated these little
movements so much.  Yet all I need to do is replace the spring, change
the movement from an unpopular tune to a popular one.  Move the
movements around so that the pretty song is in the pretty box.

Watches were originally sold without a case.  Is it wrong to marry
a box to the music?

A few years back I was able to visit Reuge, in St Croix, and most
importantly the museum in Baud.  Reuge was a bit conservative in saying
that they had purchased Thorens for the small disk boxes market under
that name.  They were more interested in marketing, than in promoting
their own history.

In thinking back to that 1991 MBSI meeting, I just realized that there
is a fascinating story I heard in 1999.

The Reuge company survived because they make skis for the military.
They had a patent for a certain type of ski binding.  Now, as I heard
it, they made ski bindings part of the year and music boxes the other
part of the year.  Does anyone know the full story?  The gist of it is
that they automatically bought the whole town as they were the only
employer and could provide year round work.

Meanwhile, Sanyo comes up with a way to make injection molded mechanical
musical movements (What is in the "Rolls Royce bar set"?) In order to
compete Reuge and Thorens must also use nylon gears and plastic parts.
I can make up a story how this could be; does anyone know who this
Guido Reuge guy was?  I sort of felt I was to know by osmosis or
something.  I cannot even spell his name.

When touring the "factories" of St Croix, I noticed that many of the
windows were painted out and so blocked the fantastic views of the
Jura mountains with the Swiss Alps in the distance.  This was done to
keep the competition from seeing what the other was up to.  But with
the competition becoming global, rather than Reuge spying on Thorens,
it is now based on market demand.

True competition now comes through spending marketing dollars.  In
other words, anyone can make a product like a wristwatch or a musical
box, but the marketing and research and development has made it clear
that only Rolex or Reuge make the best.  The important thing (as the
computer industry is learning) is that the cheapest is not necessarily
the best; the workers must have a good work environment.

Authors like Ord-Hume tend to focus on the rare and unusual.  For the
ordinary or common items all they can do is to replicate the sales
literature or the press releases that companies like Thorens or Reuge
produce.  Often the sales literature is full of glowing prose that
tends to promote the company's history.  Where there is a service
industry there are often technical charts.  Somehow the "tinkle box"
mass market opted for the Timex model of service (which is what the
computer industry uses), where whole modules are exchanged and
obsolescence is planned.

But this is a double edge sword, because "tinkle boxes" are still made,
and national or regional economies depend on it.  If the USA imported
half a billion dollars worth in 1991, has the amount decreased or
increased since then?  Is it even good for this to be public knowledge?

It used to be that industries had watchers and trade journals that
would report such; now we have the MMD and the society publications.
Should these be the industry watchdogs, as were the old magazines that
people like Chapuis and Ord-Hume wrote for?

As there have been a few asking of late as to how to make their own
music box, it can be seen that it has taken a lot of infrastructure to
make something like a Sanyo or Reuge assembly line.  In fact, when I
toured St. Croix in 1999, the Swiss said they welcome the competition
as that makes the product all the better, and places the existing
infrastructure as a disadvantage as someone would have to spend
millions to build new factories.

As for why there is not a lot written about the common or ordinary,
I think Eric Wiess (Harry Houdini) put it best when he said that few
people really wanted to know how the magic happens.  I have not found
an exact quote, but his actions imply that those who really want to
know will take the time to find out.

Also note: the broken Thorens music boxes, that I bought on eBay to
destroy for parts, will now probably be repaired and resold on eBay
as it is the case rather than the music that make these things "boxes"
or something to look at, rather than to listen to.  They are, in
effect, the very definition of novelty.  Mostly they are given as
gifts, reminders of events, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays.  The
music, or more importantly, the name of the song played, is a magical
reminder.

As for the song itself?  That is emotion.  Do we really want to open
up the heart of a memory and expose the magic?  Or, like Eric Wiess,
to remind and amaze?  For a few moments we are disconnected from time
and we re-live the moment where the song was first learned.  Should we
be willing to violate Eric Wiess' admonition about revealing how this
magic is made?

Would revealing the mystery turn the discussion into that of music
arrangers or a metal smiths?  In other words, it gets lost in the
detail of the specialization -- it becomes wine tasting or open-heart
surgery, something no one wants to listen to but gets volunteered all
the same.

Was it Oscar Wilde who said no one wants to know how sausages are
really made?

Julie Porter