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Here's a great organ clock at one of our favorite museums in Triberg - the Heimatmuseum. There is even a zither player!

The Museum Speelklok was on my list to visit on my last trip to Europe, but unfortunately we couldn't fit it in. We'll definitely try hard to make it next time! Here's a great video. It looks like they have an outstanding collection of all things horological and mechanically musical! Check out the violinola orchestrion! Organ clocks of course... Wow.

A few weeks ago I did a post on "Orchestrion Hall" and all the goodies found therein. It occurred to me that the word Orchestrion may not be so readily understood these days, so here's some pics and movies with Orchestrions. An Orchestrion is a mechanical musical instrument that starts with a large "player pipe organ." Just as there have always been player pianos or pianolas, there were pipe organs that played automatically from punched cards or punched rolls of paper. An Orchestrion goes even further by including a small orchestra of instruments that all play automatically from the same roll of music. Orchestrions included the pipe organ, drums, a piano, sometimes reed pipes, sometimes even string instruments. Here you can see the mechanisms of a Welte Orchestrion. Notice the very large bellows and air chest in the bottom. Here are some YouTube movies with some notable Orchestrions, including the magnificent collection at the Nethercutt Museum in Los Ang...

A few days ago, my Twitter followers may be been slightly mystified by my Tweets about finding hidden treasures in Baltimore. I had the inestimable pleasure of seeing a private collection of clocks, mechanical musical instruments, old fans, lamps, and more... all very rare and very interesting. The tower clock collection was particularly impressive. The house was fitted with several tower clock dials on the outside. I've gone down that street many years and never looked up to notice them. There is even a dragon outside that strikes a bell with his tail. On the inside, there were some large tower clock movements (like the one pictured above) with slots cut in the floor below them so that the pendulum could swing in the room below. I did a reblog post a few weeks ago from a Steampunk site about old tower clock towers being converted into apartments - but those places didn't have clocks in them. There were several tower clocks, most with 3-legged gravity escapements . The wh...