MBSI’s Polyphon Style 44D Table Top Disc Musical Box is displayed at the farm. Many other period displays and demonstrations are available on a rotating basis. Check the museum website for details.

No mechanical music. Noted for its balance and depth, Yale’s collection of keyboard instruments is one of the finest in the world. The Collection’s holdings comprise over a hundred examples, including organs, clavichords, harpsichords, spinets, virginals, and pianos from the workshops of the most important makers representing all the major regional schools over a span of three centuries.

Inspired in the 1950s by the collection of nickelodeon pianos at Angelo Valente’s “House of Nickelodeons”, (also known as the “Mil-Arm Inn”, at the intersection of Milwaukee and Armitage in Chicago), the Sanfilippo music machine collection was started in 1978 with a small Nelson-Wiggen coin piano, a Bruder band organ, and a Welte Concert Orchestrion. The Wurlitzer opus #1571, built in 1927 for the Riviera Theatre in Omaha, has been expanded to 80 ranks of pipes. The overall result is the most versatile orchestral theatre pipe organ ever built. The carousel building, completed in 1997, is the home of the most complete example of a European salon carousel in existence – the ‘Eden Palais’ (or Eden Palace), built in 1890. The American Orchestrion Room, featuring a colorful display of some of the most beautiful art glass-front orchestrions ever made, including a Coinola SO, a Peerless Wisteria, a Peerless Arcadian with fancy carvings and hanging lamps, a Peerless Elite with flute pipes. All of the events open to the public are listed and updated regularly on the collection website, and in its E-Newsletter.

MIM’s Mechanical Music Gallery features a selection of musical instruments such as player pianos, mechanical zithers, and cylinder music boxes that, by definition, “play themselves.” The period between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, known as the Golden Age of Mechanical Music, saw the creation of a remarkable range of self-playing instruments in Europe and the Americas. MIM’s Mechanical Music Gallery highlights a range of mechanical instrument types and technologies from this era, including artistic examples that feature animated components such as human and animal figures.

Weber pianola, Manchester seraphone, Symphonion disc box, Polyphon disc box, street organ presented as part of an exhibit on British Victorian-era life.