The Autophone was an early type of
organette
The Organette was a mechanical free-reed programmable (automatic) musical instrument first manufactured in the late 1870s by several companies such as John McTammany of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Autophone Company of Ithaca, New York, the Auto ...
, invented in 1878 by
Henry Bishop Horton
Henry Bishop Horton (September 1, 1819, in Winchester, Connecticut – December 3, 1885, in Ithaca, New York) was an American inventor, remembered chiefly for his inventions in automatic music players and clock-making.
Around 1823, his famil ...
. One of the first table-top
organettes to be mass-produced, it played music using
punched cards
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to d ...
to activate 22 reeds.
See also
References
External links
*{{cite web, title=Autophone {{! "Autophone" Organette {{! American {{! The Met, url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/504965, website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum
1878 in music
Organs (music)