Mechanical Music Digest  Archives
You Are Not Logged In Login/Get New Account
Please Log In. Accounts are free!
Logged In users are granted additional features including a more current version of the Archives and a simplified process for submitting articles.
Home Archives Calendar Gallery Store Links Info

End-of-Year Fundraising Drive In Progress. Please visit our home page to see this and other announcements: https://www.mmdigest.com     Thank you. --Jody

MMD > Archives > February 2015 > 2015.02.19 > 05Prev  Next


Mason and Hamlin 46-note Player Organ
By Rowland Lee

Thanks to all the people who responded to my previous posting,
including the gentleman with a collection in the US who has an
identical instrument.

I hadn't previously appreciated that there was an early connection
between music rolls and the Mason and Hamlin organisation.  The
Automatic Music Paper Company, the first to manufacture music rolls
commercially in the USA, began manufacture in 1877 in workshop space
rented from Mason and Hamlin, in a part of their factory near Boston.
The AMPC were supplying, among others, William Tremaine of the
Mechanical Orguinette Company, the founder of the Aeolian empire, who
bought them out the following year.

It is then perhaps not too fanciful to imagine that Tremaine, wanting
to experiment with building a roll-playing reed organ somewhat larger
than an organette, might have obtained some instruments from Mason and
Hamlin, and adapted them.

It is frustrating that I cannot find a serial number on my instrument.
The only guides to dating it are the characteristic 'Gold medals' over
the keyboard, which seem to have been added to every couple of years or
so;  My organ has 6 of these, 3 each side, and the latest date there is
1881, so perhaps this is, after all, a particularly early example of
the genre.

Rowland Lee
UK


(Message sent Thu 19 Feb 2015, 19:28:20 GMT, from time zone GMT-0800.)

Key Words in Subject:  46-note, Hamlin, Mason, Organ, Player

Home    Archives    Calendar    Gallery    Store    Links    Info   


Enter text below to search the MMD Website with Google



CONTACT FORM: Click HERE to write to the editor, or to post a message about Mechanical Musical Instruments to the MMD

Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are those of the individual authors and may not represent those of the editors. Compilation copyright 1995-2024 by Jody Kravitz.

Please read our Republication Policy before copying information from or creating links to this web site.

Click HERE to contact the webmaster regarding problems with the website.

Please support publication of the MMD by donating online

Please Support Publication of the MMD with your Generous Donation

Pay via PayPal

No PayPal account required

                                     
Translate This Page