Database Reports for Wurlitzer PianOrchestra and Paganini Orchestrions
Wurlitzer PianOrchestra and Paganini Orchestrions
The Wurlitzer Company, with its strong interest in anything musical, was
finally forced in 1909 to take over and operate the old de Kleist Musical
Instrument Works factory (at North Tonawanda, New York), which manufactured
many of the automatic musical instruments being marketed and sold by
Wurlitzer. This takeover was deemed necessary to ensure the continued
quality of manufactured products, which had declined by 1909 due to the
financial success and mounting inattention to business by its owner, Eugene
de Kleist. Once firmly in the hands of Wurlitzer, over time the North
Tonawanda factory complex was enlarged and became an ever more important
part of the overall Wurlitzer operation. At some point in 1911 it was
apparently decided that the importation, storage, and shipping of large
Philipps orchestrions from Germany, which were thought to have previously
been handled mainly through the corporate headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio,
was at least partially moved to the enlarged and increasingly important
North Tonawanda facility. Then, beginning in 1912, the North Tonawanda
factory shipping ledgers begin recording the domestic shipping of the
PianOrchestra and Paganini orchestrions, but whether this included all such
instruments shipped by Wurlitzer is unknown. As Wurlitzer's success
continued to grow and the North Tonawanda factory continued to be enlarged,
much of it due to the outstanding success of the (Hope-Jones) Wurlitzer Unit
Orchestras (a.k.a., Theater Organs) in the early 1920s, the factory complex
became the company's pride and joy, a showcase manufacturing facility
located prominently in North Tonawanda, New York.
Unfortunately, the only known surviving Wurlitzer documents that show
PianOrchestra and Paganini deliveries begin recording shipments in 1912.
Then importation of Philipps instruments was halted in 1914 due to the
outbreak of World War I, but remaining stock and recycled instruments
returned to the factory for refitting and rehabilitation continued to be
shipped until the last Philipps made instrument was shown as shipped from
the North Tonawanda factory in November of 1923. Maybe a few more
PianOrchestras or Paganinis shipped from a Wurlitzer showroom in some
distant city, or from the main company offices and showroom in Cincinnati,
but if this is the case there are no known records that can support any such
speculation or how many such "rogue" units might have been sold and shipped.
But
what about all of the Philipps instruments imported circa 1903 up through
1911? How many were there and where did they go? Speculation has it that
they were probably shipped to the Wurlitzer company headquarters in
Cincinnati, Ohio, and distributed from there, and possibly some imports
continued to go directly to Cincinnati even after the "finishing" and
shipping of imported instruments was shifted to the North Tonawanda factory
location. But there is also the chance that some imported Philipps
instruments went directly to a Wurlitzer's office/showroom in Chicago, New
York or elsewhere. Thus, while the surviving North Tonawanda factory
shipping records are both interesting and a valuable reference, it is also
well understood that they do not show nor represent the total number of
PianOrchestras and Paganinis actually sold and shipped to customers by
Wurlitzer.
Multiplicity of Reports
This Registry page devoted to Wurlitzer PianOrchestras and Paganini
Orchestrions is for the most part a near replica or restatement of the
prettily formatted PianOrchestra and Paganini Shipping Lists and analysis that is available
elsewhere in the Wurlitzer / Philipps Orchestrion Histories section
of this web site, but presented here with a tad more detail. Also, the
information is presented here in a much more printer friendly format, which
may make studying the PianOrchestra and Paganini information easier than a
purely visually intended web page format. Another benefit of having the
information contained in database format, versus a static web page, is that
the data can be arranged, indexed, and formatted in various ways for
complementary reports that may make understanding the relational
complexities of the material easier to recognize and assimilate.
The original basis of these reports comes from two hand-typed list that
were personally given by Farny Wurlitzer to Q. David Bowers during a visit
to the North Tonawanda, New York, Wurlitzer factory while doing research for
his book, Put Another Nickel In, circa 1965. The two lists were
later used at Hathaway & Bowers, Inc. (1967-1972), and as a reference for
the writing of the Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments, also by Q. David Bowers, first published in 1972.
For convenience each report is available separately and arranged artfully
with ease of study and analysis a priority, as follows:
PianOrchestras by Date Report: This report lists
Wurlitzer PianOrchestras in shipping date order, which more or less
corresponds to the order in which they were originally entered into the
factory ledgers.
PianOrchestras by Group Report: This report lists
Wurlitzer PianOrchestras grouped by year, further grouped by style and
then indexed by the Wurlitzer serial number and secondarily indexed by
the Philipps serial number.
Paganinis by Date Report: This report lists Wurlitzer Paganini Violin Orchestras in shipping date
order, which more or less corresponds to the order in which they were
originally entered into the factory ledgers.
Paganinis by Group Report: This report lists Wurlitzer Paganini Violin Orchestras grouped by year
and indexed by Style and then further indexed by the Wurlitzer serial
number and third by the Philipps serial number. Unlike the PianOrchestra by Group Report the Paganini instruments are not
secondarily grouped by style. This is because there are so few
instruments per year, making a secondary grouping seem both unnecessary
and an undue visual complication to an otherwise exceptionally clean and
easy to read report.
In late 2009 the original PianOrchestra and Paganini lists provided by
Farny Wurlitzer were corroborated, corrected, and augmented using several
"new" sources of information. The updating process included (1) comparing
the hand-typed lists with Wurlitzer's North Tonawanda factory shipping
ledgers (courtesy of David Reidy) and (2) augmenting the material using
PianOrchestra information recorded on various loose notes and stray bits of
data also obtained from Farny Wurlitzer during the mid 1960s, which were not
included as part of the hand-typed shipping list documents. This means that
the PianOrchestra reports offered here are a little more comprehensive than
either the Farny Wurlitzer lists or the Wurlitzer factory shipping ledgers
themselves. In short, this recent effort has improved the accuracy of the
old material plus added bits and pieces heretofore scattered and virtually
unknown. This well deserved and across-the-board rechecking and updating of
the old lists resulted after the examination of the Wurlitzer Factory
Shipping Ledgers, currently in the possession of Mr. David Reidy. We at
the Mechanical Music Press are very grateful for the opportunity to inspect
these historic ledgers.
When perusing the reports you might keep several things in mind. Foremost
is the fact that there appear to be a few duplication errors in the use of
serial numbers, i.e., several instances where two different styles of
instruments are assigned the same serial number. This is in contrast to the
repeated shipping of the same instrument with the same serial number after a
sales return or trade-in, rehabilitation, and reshipping to a new customer.
Another kind of apparent error in the Wurlitzer factory ledgers (which only
list band organs, PianOrchestras, and Paganini Violin Orchestrions) is that
when an instrument recycles through the factory for repairs or
rehabilitation the case finish might be shown as markedly different from the
original, or some other attribute may vary, but maybe only for one of the
recurring trips through the factory. There are other kinds of suspected
errors, too, which all in all lead to the conclusion that there may be many
other instances where an error cannot be recognized as an error.
Unfortunately, while we recognize that some errors seem to exist, the
limited historic documentation currently available prevents anyone from
knowing how to resolve these apparent mistakes--or recognize other careless
mistakes not yet recognized as suspect. The best we can currently do is to
faithfully present the data right along with any and all of its entrained
errors, while being careful to not produce additional errors of our own.
Another question that has arisen is this: What is meant by "shipping
date?" The term "shipping" has been applied to both the Farny Wurlitzer
lists and the Wurlitzer factory (shipping) ledgers and the dates mentioned
therein, but this may not be how this material was originally viewed or
described. In the Farny Wurlitzer lists there is a defined "Date" and "Ship
to" column, but nowhere is the date defined as being any kind of shipping
date; this usage has been assumed. Moreover, there are only a small number
of pages in the three extant Wurlitzer factory ledgers where the term "Date
of Shipment" is actually and clearly defined, but this limited usage has
influenced how all the other pages have been viewed and interpreted,
essentially due to the lack of any further definitively consistent column
headings or notations. Furthermore, where the heading "Date of Shipment"
does occur is a rather special circumstance, and only in ledger #1. Made
with pre-printed lined paper, right smack-dab in the middle of the listings
for the year 1914 there is an inserted series of what look more like
columnar tables than listings as elsewhere laid out, and with three or four
hand-drawn columns:
"No." for serial number,
"Style" for instrument style, plus special attributes and comments,
"Date of Shipment" for 1908 - 1909, or simply "Date" for 1910 -
1911,
"Finish" for type of case finish.
These simple looking tables of columnar band organ only listings
interrupt the flow of regular 1914 listings, and seem to have been suddenly
imported into the ledger, without regard for its data flow and layout, from
some earlier source, probably to keep the data intact. This oddly inserted
extraneous material is the only place where a date can affirmatively be
associated with the "shipping date" concept. Ledgers #2 and #3 differ from
ledger #1 in that they are made of standard pre-printed columnar format
paper, but no column labels are written, and like the "normal" parts of
ledger #1 the date is always inserted at the right hand margin. Thus, the
only commentary suggesting that the date is indeed a shipping date is in the
inserted table-like listing for 1908 - 1911 band organs.
Considering the consistent lack of definitive column headings, ledger
layout and a few terse comments scatted throughout the ledgers there is
reason to wonder whether the dates provided for much of the material are a
bona-fide "shipping date" or perhaps something more correctly thought of as
a "finish date." A finish date could be the date on which instrument was
"finished," i.e., mechanically completed and/or sent to be packed and made
ready for shipment, whereby a "shipping date" would be the actual moment in
time when the packed and prepared instrument was actually loaded onto some
sort of external transportation for its journey to the customer. Adding
credence to this "finish date" proposition is a note stating that an
instrument "stood in packing room after being finished," which implies that
product might sometimes be temporarily marooned in a packing area before
actually being shipped. However, the actuality of this matter cannot be
determined, and so for ease of usage and practicality the dates given are
generally assumed to be shipping dates. But even if the dates do turn out to
be "finishing dates" the difference between "finished and ready for packing"
and actual "on-the-dock-shipping" is probably, in most instances, no more
than a few days.
Updating the Database and Reporting Errors
To report errors and/or to submit new information regarding Wurlitzer
PianOrchestra and Paganini Orchestrions please send any corrections
and/or changes via a e-mail to
Please be aware that the Mechanical Music Press and/or its authors
may, at their sole discretion, require some sort of verification as to
the authenticity and accuracy of any submitted information and/or
material.
All database report information is
offered "as is," without any guarantee or warranty whatsoever of any kind,
neither stated, implied, nor inferred, as to the accuracy, correctness,
exactness, suitability, or usefulness of any content.
Distribution of Database Information Last Updated on February 22, 2016
The database PDF
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their contents. The free Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from Adobe by
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Download the current database report as a PDF
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clicking on a left hand button, or report another
instrument by clicking the right hand button.
23 pages.
4 Pages.
27 pages.
5 pages.
Credits:
Wurlitzer PianOrchestra/Paganini data compiled and put
into database format by Terry Hathaway, and with appreciation to David Reidy
for granting the opportunity in late 2009 to authenticate the hand-typed
list information against the official Wurlitzer Factory Shipping
Ledgers.
Graphics:
Terry Hathaway, Q. David Bowers for catalogue source
material.
But
what about all of the Philipps instruments imported circa 1903 up through
1911? How many were there and where did they go? Speculation has it that
they were probably shipped to the Wurlitzer company headquarters in
Cincinnati, Ohio, and distributed from there, and possibly some imports
continued to go directly to Cincinnati even after the "finishing" and
shipping of imported instruments was shifted to the North Tonawanda factory
location. But there is also the chance that some imported Philipps
instruments went directly to a Wurlitzer's office/showroom in Chicago, New
York or elsewhere. Thus, while the surviving North Tonawanda factory
shipping records are both interesting and a valuable reference, it is also
well understood that they do not show nor represent the total number of
PianOrchestras and Paganinis actually sold and shipped to customers by
Wurlitzer.
