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generations.”
SWISS craftsmen started the music box craze in the early 1800’s, and the fad soon spread to Germany and France. Elegant mahogany, cherry, and rosewood boxes decorated with porcelain plaques housed complicated mechanisms that played everything from the classics to the hits of the day.
The mechanisms became even more elaborate than the boxes. Some came complete with tiny bells, drums, castanets, and cymbals. Said an astonished visitor after a tour through a modest German shop: “You press a button on the side of a small, beautifully engraved case, and a bird no bigger than a peanut pops out, opens its bill, flutters its wings, and pipes in a sweet, shrill voice, turning as it sings. Then it pops back and the lid goes down.”
Large coin-operated music boxes—forerunners of modern juke boxes—were placed in taverns, railroad stations, and hotels to amuse the clientele.
Tiny metal butterflies struck bells on some mechanisms as dancing dolls went through their paces. A coin placed in one device rocked a tiny boat, activated a windmill, marched a sentry around a turret, and propelled a train across a bridge.
MASS production of music boxes started the craze in the United States about 1892. In 20 years one company sold 100,000 music boxes and at time took in $2,000,000 a year in sales, a staggering figure for the times. A vigorous advertising campaign kept the cash ref
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