Musical box

The discs can also be played on many antique music boxes bearing the Polyphony and Regina brand names. The terms "Middle Eastern" and "Westerner" follow the same pattern as "oriental", yet are subject to less controversy. They stand out by their continuing production of discs, with a selection of about a thousand tunes. However, traditionally, Europe has considered itself to be the West (not the center), while the areas around Israel, Turkey, Greece and Egypt, have been considered to be near the center of the world. They offer clockwork, spring wound models as well as electric ones. Some consider the term "oriental" to be an example of Eurocentrism, since they see it is as a term used to describe people and regions that are to the East only in relation to Europe. The Porter Music Box company of Vermont produces steel disc music boxes in several formats. In Europe the term is used to describe such things as the East's cuisine and goods, ancient culture, and religions, at times to denote an exotic quality.

The company is an industrial concern which also makes magnetic and hologram card readers, appliance components, industrial robots and miniature motors of all kinds. Its use is much less controversial in Europe and Hawaii (despite Hawaii's location, which is east of the Orient), as well as in Asia where, especially in Southeast Asian countries, the word is in comparatively widespread usage. Recently, it has started selling licences for its music box tunes to cellular phone companies, for use as ring tones. Major objections to the use of Oriental are chiefly limited to North America. Sankyo Seiki bills itelf as the biggest manufacturer of music boxes in the world, and advertises that it controls 50% of the market. The main criticism of the term is that it is overly vague, referring to a category of peoples with widely divergent cultural and ethnic backgrounds and no clear division between which groups belong to the term and which do not. It also supplies movements to many other manufacturers, or to clockmakers and clockmaker suppliers which sometimes sell them retail to hobbyists for as low as 3 Euros each. Some Asian Americans see parallels between the word "oriental" and "nigger", though many see it as simply old-fashioned and functionless, as many African Americans see the word "Negro".

In Japan Sankyo Seiki still makes a wide variety of music boxes from tiny musical keychains to much larger models. Furthermore, it is claimed that some courses in "Oriental studies" were riddled with inaccurate information that was used to justify colonization of these countries. They also sell several models of clear acrylic paperweights with a musical box movement inside, for a minimum of about 45 Euros. Many of these people saw the East as backwards, while the West was seen as logical, rational and more modern. The higher range boxes with removable cylinders and small assorted tables made of fine woods can cost up to 34,000 Euros and about an equivalent number of US dollars. Some people think the term "Oriental" is derogatory, largely because of its connection to imperial 19th century Europeans and Americans who are thought to have held a patronising attitude towards the region. They have in a sense branched out widely from their original cylinder offerings since they now also offer traditional looking music boxes with removable metal disks for around a 1,000 Euros, with each disk costing in the neighborhood of 14 Euros. A bottle of HP Sauce says on the label that it contains a mixture of oriental spices, for example.

Located near Lake Neuchâtel, Reuge is one of the last of the Swiss survivors making music boxes of all sizes and shapes, with or without automatons in imitation of past models of the previous centries or in a modern style with clear acrylic sides to see the mechanical operation. Asian countries such as India, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka are no longer generally considered by some people to be part of the Orient. Some went back to making watches, others were eventually responsible for the famous Bolex movie cameras and the Hermes typewriters. The term "Oriental" refers to people, goods and culture from those areas. Between the two world wars most of the swiss companies converted to the manufacture of other products requiring precise mechanical parts. In popular usage, the Orient is most often used in reference to the countries of East Asia, including China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and sometimes the rest of Southeast Asia. They are eagerly sought by collectors who have the space for their large or very large cabinets. Remnants of the older conception of the Orient still exist in the English language in such collocations as "Oriental rug" and "Oriental harem".

Because most of the coin-operated music boxes were built for rough treatment (such as typical slapping and kicking by a disgruntled customer) many of these large models have survived into the 21st century, despite their relatively low production quantities. As awareness of the countries of Eastern Asia grew in Western European and American consciousness in the late 19th century, the term came to refer primarily to China, Japan, and the surrounding nations. However, since they produced music instead of playing back any sound, including human voices singing, they soon disappeared from their intended venues, displaced by the jukebox. This particularly included Persia, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Egypt. These were, in an sense, the precursors to jukeboxes. Traditionally, the Orient referred primarily to the cultures and countries of what are now considered Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia. Some of the models had a mechanism for automatically changing the metal disks. Oriental is also used as an adjective akin to "eastern": for example, the Philippine island Mindoro is divided into two provinces whose titles include the words "oriental" and "occidental" respectively.

In Switzerland coin-operated music boxes, usually capable of playing several tunes, were installed in places like train stations and amusement parks. For example, Mizrahi Jews (native to the Middle East) are often referred to as Oriental Jews and the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies focuses on the Middle East, East Asia and Africa. Surviving musical boxes from the 19th century and the early 20th century are prized by collectors and there is a more or less constant manufacturing of reproductions. "Oriental" is sometimes used by certain regions in the West as a term to describe people, cultures and goods from the Orient. These movements are also sold in retail outlets or by catalog for hobbyists who wish to make simple musical miniatures.
. Cheap windup music box movements (including the cylinder and comb and the spring) continued to be produced in countries like Japan, and later on in other countries with low production costs, to give a bit of music to mass produced jewelry boxes and novelty items. The opposite term "Occident" - derived from the Latin word occidens, referring to the west - was once used to describe the western world, but has fallen into disuse.

A few of the original ones found new markets. The term is derived from the Latin word oriens, referring to where the sun rises in the east. Series production rapidly disappeared and all the important companies closed their doors. . At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th most musical boxes were gradually replaced by Player pianos, which were more versatile and loud, and also melodious, when kept tuned, and by the smaller gramophones which had the advantage of playing back voices. The Orient (orient literally means "sunrise east") is a term traditionally used to refer to Near, Middle and Far Eastern countries. Some devices could do both at the same time, and were often combinations of player pianos and musical boxes, such as the Orchestrion.

Instead, the cylinder (or disk) worked by actuating bellows and levers which fed and opened pneumatic valves which activated a modified wind instrument or plucked the chords on a modified string instrument. The term "musical box" is also applied to clockwork devices where a removable metal disk or cylinder was used only in a "programming" function without producing the sounds directly by means of pins and a comb. The cylinder based machines rapidly became a minority. In the last decades of the 19th century however, mass produced models such as the Polyphon and others all made use of interchangeable metal disks instead of cylinders.

The switch over to cylinders seems to have been complete after the Napoleonic wars. The very first boxes at the end of the 18th century made use of metal disks. In some exceptional models there were four springs, to provide continuous play for up to three hours. In some of the costlier models, the cylinders could be removed to change melodies, thanks to an invention by Paillard in 1862, which was perfected by Metert, of Geneva in 1879.

The cylinders were normally made of metal and powered by a spring. By the end of the 19th century some of the European makers had opened factories in the United States. There were also a few manufacturers in Bohemia and Germany. The first musical box factory was opened there in 1815 by Jérémie Recordon and Samuel Junod.

For most of the 19th century the bulk of musical box production was concentrated in Switzerland, building upon a strong watchmaking tradition. They were usually powered by clockwork and originally produced by artisan watchmakers. Most of them were table top specimens though. The musical boxes could have any size from that of a hat box to a large piece of furniture.

The original snuff boxes were tiny containers which could fit into a gentleman's waist coat pocket. . Alec Templeton, an avid collector of music boxes, and a professional concert musician, once noted that the tone of a musical box is unlike that of any musical instrument (although it is best described as somewhere between the timbres of an mbira and a celesta). Some of the more complex boxes also have a tiny drum and small bells, in addition to the metal comb.

They were developed from musical snuff-boxes of the 18th century, and called carillons à musique. A musical box (or music box) is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder so as to strike the tuned teeth of a steel comb. This function is played by the cylinder in a cylinder music box. The disc is the programming object, a metallic version of a punched card which, like it has holes to express a program, star wheels which turn with the disc produce music by striking the teeth of the comb at the correct time.

This function is payed by the disc in a disc music box. The cylinder is the programming object, a metallic version of a punched card which, instead of having holes to express a program, is studded with tiny pins at the correct spacing to produce music by striking the teeth of the comb at the correct time. The comb is a flat piece of metal with dozens or even hundreds of tuned teeth of different lengths. The spring motor or motors (2 or more can be used to make playing times longer) give anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more of playing time.

The ratchet lever or the windup key is used to put the spring motor under tension, that is to wind it up. The bedpan is the relatively heavy metal foundation on which all the other pieces are fastened, usually by screws.