Music Box - Bell Music - Simple Circuit using NE555 & CD4017B

Music Box - Bell Music

In 1796, Antoine Favre of Geneva, Switzerland made the key breakthrough.

He replaced bells with pre-tuned metal strips that made possible a broader scale and more precise sound.

Plucked teeth arrive! This advanced miniaturization further.

Music is married to the pocket watch. Adding a clock-like spring driven mechanism, an on/off switch and removable cylinders provided control and variety to music boxes and pocket watches.

Like the old German wall clock with glass bell chimes, some music boxes had tuned bells struck by hammers that are driven by the pinned cylinder, to accompany the music provided by the plucked metal comb.

There, Alix Gueissaz made music boxes.

The tie back to the 14th Century carillon was reestablished in miniature. Design evolution continued with the musical pocket watch. Both the box and watch rapidly developed in Geneva; and after 1811 in Sainte-Croix (L'Auberson), Switzerland.

This improvement grew the single piece comb to 290-325 teeth.

His son Jules-Louis was the firm's salesman and started selling abroad, notably to Ismail, shah of Persia (Iran). Other advances included the "sectional comb", which allowed a greatly expanded number of notes and octaves. The one-piece comb replaced the 1 through 6 teeth per section combs.

By the 1850's key wind was replaced by the lever spring winder.

Three hundred plus teeth offered a much greater note scale than the 88-note piano keyboard. Boxes became more ornate. Musical arrangements were limited only by the tune arranger's imagination. Musical sounds expanded with harmony, mandolin, guitar, piano, drum, bells, expression changes and triangle. The box cylinder now contained six to twelve tunes.

In 1877, Edison's talking machine came along but remained for decades, a comparatively primitive recording device.

Uninterrupted play was achieved. As the Civil War raged in the U.S., the 1860's also saw some music boxes combined with organ pipes and triangle. In other designs, a clock could activate the music box cylinder to play a different tune on the hour. That took a lot of spring winding. In the later 19th Century, music boxes were also married to moveable figures, both human and animal.

Electricity, the food of radio and later electronics was beginning to grow across America.

Birds sing in cages and feed their young. Ballerinas pirouette. Japanese geishas flirted to music and animals both wild and domestic moved to music, all before movies, phonograph or radio.

Toiling by sunlight and whale oil lamps, workers fitting pins, one-by-one, into brass cylinders were being replaced by factory mass production of stamped metal discs.

Simple Circuit using NE555 & CD4017B Electronic Hobbies Hobi Elektronika