The Mills Novelty Company
Non-Violin Playing Automatic Musical Machines

(Photograph courtesy of Terry Smythe)

The Mills Magnetic Expression Piano, a 65-note electrically operated coin piano. The Magnetic Expression Piano uses electrical components and a narrow music roll reminiscent of the more popular Violano-Virtuoso. Introduced in the early 1920s, only a dozen or so specimens exist today.

(Photograph courtesy of Terry Smythe)

The Mills Race Horse Piano is essentially a Mills Magnetic Expression Piano with a modified case. In place of the decorative art glass panels is a race horse attachment visible behind a single glass pane. Each time a nickel is dropped in the coin slot a new horse race begins. Thus, this "trade stimulator' supposedly brought in more money than did just a straight coin piano, purportedly because excited patrons would deposit several nickels for horse races during the playing of a single tune. Only a dozen or so of these Mills race horse coin pianos survive today.

(Photograph courtesy of Q. David Bowers)

A Mills Race Horse Piano with the bottom cabinet doors open, showing the music roll feeder and the bottom shelf where a AC-DC converter was formerly mounted.

(Photograph courtesy of Q. David Bowers)

The Mills Piano Orchestra. It appears to be built around the Mills Magnetic Expression Piano using the same symmetrical piano. Accompanying the piano are (from left to right) cymbals, a snare drum (with both tap and reiterating beaters), a tom-tom, and a wood block. In the bottom, alongside the music roll feeder and AC-DC converter, is a bass drum. It is speculated that this model was introduced in the late 1920s, possibly in 1928, at or about the same time as the orchestra cabinet attachment for the Violano-Virtuoso. No examples of the Mills Piano Orchestra are known to exist.