I just discovered a resource for free patent searching that offers
some improvement over the limited capabilities of uspto.gov.  The
European Patent Office runs a site at http://ep.espacenet.com/ that
allows searches of worldwide patents and seems to have US patents
back to about 1920 in their database.  This won't help for many of our
interests, but I was able to find, for example, US1633487 and US1660172
issued to Artizan factories, Christian Maerten, Jr., inventor,
describing the Artizan band organ mechanisms in some detail.  PDF
images of the patents are available, albeit one page at a time.

Interestingly, both the EU and USA have defined extensive
classifications for automatic musical instruments (G10F in the EU),
G10F5 "Details of or accessories for automatic musical instruments",
and so on.  I've tracked down some of the equivalent USPTO designations;
for example, CCL84/6 is automatic instruments, pneumatic; CCL86/8 are
instruments with picking devices: automatic banjos, zithers, etc.

The listing for class 84 can be found at
http://www.uspto.gov/go/classification/uspc084/defs084.htm#C084S006000

Unfortunately you can only get to lists of patent numbers under each
classification and then you have to open the page images of each to see
what they are.  On the other hand, all the early numbers I've looked at
have been something interesting!

Another resource is http://www.delphion.com/ , a full service commercial
patent searching service where, at the moment, they will give you one
day of unlimited access to their service if you have never registered
with them before.  I believe (but cannot confirm, since I am a long
time user of their basic free service that only goes back to 1971) that
they offer keyword searching of all US and PCT patents and download of
the PDF images.

Cheers,
Roger Wiegand
Wayland, MA USA