What is New to this Web Site

(Index of New and/or Updated Pages)

New and Updated Mechanical Music Press Items

yyyy-mm-dd Description
2024-03-06 Updated: Updated and added a new tracker scale for the late Philipps Jazz-Band Piano in the Philipps Pianella / Wurlitzer PianOrchestra Tracker-Bar Scales page.
2024-03-05 Maintenance: Updated and made corrections to all descriptive pages relating to Philipps Pianella Orchestrions and Paganini type instruments and for all Wurlitzer PianOrchestras and Paganini instruments. More German naming conventions and notations have been honored and applied where appropriate, especially for those Philipps instruments that were always located in Europe and were never branded with the Wurlitzer logo.
2004-02-23 New: Added new Philipps Pianella P.E.Orchestrion page to the Wurlitzer / Philipps Orchestrions section.
2024-02-14 Updated: Updated and corrected the Pianella Modell P.E. Violinen Orchester tracker scale and additionally added color coding to aid in the visualization of its differing tonal qualities on the Philipps Pianella / Wurlitzer PianOrchestra Tracker-Bar Scales page.
2024-02-14 Maintenance: Validated all files relative to the History Topics Section for HTML5 compliance and corrected any validation errors, which included: (1) Articles & Stories; (2) How-To-Do-It Articles; (3) Hupfeld Orchestrions & Violin Players; (4) Welte Orchestrions; and (5) Wurlitzer / Philipps Orchestrions. Additionally, where appropriate, photographs were enlarged to conform to aesthetic and minimum image display size guidelines.
2024-02-13 New: Replaced the Introduction to Wurlitzer / Philipps page in the Wurlitzer / Philipps Orchestrions section. Added a lot of additional information never shared before regarding Philipps mechanical music machines, including the newly translated to English Philipps 50-Year Jubilee, as presented in the July 15, 1927 issue of Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau.
2024-02-04 New: Added new The Fabulous Raney Collection page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2022-05-21 New: Added new The Chicago Coin-Operated Piano and Orchestrion Rolls page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2022-01-28 New: Added new Peerless, Engelhardt, and National Electric Company page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2020-04-01 New: Added new Rembert, The “Stradivarius Wurlitzer” page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2020-01-01 Updated: Added new Link tune indicator information to the Link Piano Company page in the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2019-07-17 Updated: Added new roll titles to the Wurlitzer 65-Note APP Rollography page in the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2019-06-03 New: Added new Time Went Back at Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2019-04-12 Updated:: Automatic Musical and Link Piano Company Registry page. Added a new, circa 1926, employee group photograph with a name and location chart to the Location_and_Personnel_Timelines PDF format document.
2018-10-14 Updated:: Marquette Piano Company Registry page. Added new information about Cremona's paddle/blade type mandolin attachments.
2018-01-14. New: Added new Jukeboxes (Coin Operated Phonographs) section to the Mechanical Music Links & Resources page.
2018-01-01 New: Added new The David L. Junchen Rollography page to the Mechanical Music Registry section, listing the music rolls arranged by the late David Junchen.
2017-12-14 New: Added new National Automatic Piano Rollography page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2017-10-08 New: Added new National Automatic Music Company Pianos page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2017-05-24 Updated: Melville Clark Piano Company--Apollo Pianos page. Added new Apollo Music Roll Types section with its own new image pane,
2017-05-13 Updated: Empress Electric Piano Registry page. Added additional model information and corrected reported errors.
2017-04-30 New: Added new Behind the Taj Mahal page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2016-12-21 Updated: Operators Piano Company Registry page. Added additional Coinola coin piano information and thumbnail links, plus new Reproduco piano organ and Reproduco Unified Organ information with thumbnail links.
2016-11-22 Maintenance: Began a gradual process of replacing the downloadable Adobe Acrobat PDF format interactive fill-in forms used for Registry submissions, and changing over to new on-line forms using standard HTML coding. This change is being implemented due to the increasing security barriers and restrictions being imposed by browsers in regards to PDF format documents, and the consequent difficulties for site visitor's trying to make use of interactive PDF forms.
2016-11-08 New: Added new The Staying Power of Welte Orchestrions page to the Welte Orchestrion section.
2016-10-27 New: Added new Welte Orchestrions—The Age of Opulence page to the Welte Orchestrion section.
2016-10-13 Updated: Welte Style 6 Concert Orchestrion, originally located in Nidd Hall, Yorkshire, England. Upgraded numerous photographs for clarity, revised some caption text, and added another image pane regarding the reassembly of the Welte orchestrion during restoration.

New: Added new Summary of Welte Music Roll Styles page to the Welte Orchestrion section.
2016-05-31 Reinstated: Seeburg Factory Video -- This short video, courtesy of the late Claes Friberg (Mekanisk Music Museum), consists of brief excerpts from a silent motion picture clip probably filmed by a European crew circa 1927-1928.
2016-05-01 Updated: PianOrchestra/Paganini/Pianella Rollography Project page. Added Wurlitzer’s Importation of Philipps Music Rolls sub-section about approximately when PianOrchestra and Paganini music rolls were first cut by Wurlitzer.
2015-11-02 New: Added new Taking the Day's Receipts from the Tonophone page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2015-10-29 New: Added new Air Calliopes page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2015-03-10 New: Added new The Wurlitzer Story page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2015-02-05 New: Added new Wurlitzer 65-Note APP Rollography page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2014-07-30 Updated: The Wurlitzer Direct Drive System study project page in the Mechanical Music Registry section is being merged with the new Wurlitzer Coin Piano (and Photoplayer) study project page. The Direct Drive Gear information is now more correctly a sub-section of the Wurlitzer Coin Piano database, with the former reports and Survey Form having been improved.
2013-12-10 New: Added new Encore Automatic Banjo Rollography external link (Rich Crandall Library) to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2012-12-04 New: Added new Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina Rollography external link (Rich Crandall Library) to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2013-11-09 Updated: Philipps Pianella / Wurlitzer PianOrchestra Tracker-Bar Scales page. Added Philipps P.E. Tracker Scale.
2013-10-23 Updated: Wurlitzer Style 29-C Mandolin PianOrchestra page. Added Brian Smith's Story about the PianOrchestra when it was in the Ghost Town Museum at Knott's Berry Farm.
2013-09-22 New: Added new Empress Electric Pianos (Lyon & Healy Company) page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2013-08-10 New: Added new Chicago Electric Pianos (Smith, Barnes & Strohber Company) page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2013-07-30 New: Added new Photographic Galleries of Instruments Restored by Reblitz Restorations page to the Reblitz Restorations section.
2013-04-06 New: Added new Melville Clark Piano Company--Apollo Pianos page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2013-02-27 Maintenance: Obsolete HTML page header metadata types removed and remaining metadata lines upgraded so as to correctly validate as HTML5 compliant. PICS label metadata headers for web site rating removed as unnecessary.
2012-09-18 New: Added new Wurlitzer Family Grave Sites page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2012-06-19 New: Added new Changing a Link Endless Music Roll page to the How-To-Do-It section.
2012-06-19 New: Added a new "How-To-Do-It Articles" menu option for all appropriate navigation menus.
2012-06-18 New: Added new Gustav Schönstein (Special Factory for Music Works) page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2012-06-15 New: Added new Automatic Musical / Link Piano Company page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2012-01-01 New: Added new Philipps Model 3 Paganini page to the Wurlitzer / Philipps Orchestrion Histories section.
2011-12-25 New: Added new Mills Novelty Company page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2011-08-06 Removed: The Seeburg / Western Electric Research Project has been permanently removed with all page requests re-directed to the new Registry page for Seeburg / Western Electric Piano Companies.
2011-08-06 New: Added new Seeburg / Western Electric Piano Companies page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2011-07-21 New: Added new Apollo (Melville Clark/Wurlitzer) page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2011-07-19 Updated: Added new motor photographs to the Examples of Emerson Electric Motors image pane. (Mechanical Music Registry section).
2011-07-06 New: Added new Tracker Bar Hole Spacing page to the Historical Technical Articles section.
2011-07-05 New: Added new A Letter from Farny page to the Historical Articles and Stories section.
2011-06-29 New: Added new Getting Started section to the top of the homepage navigation menu, with an option for How to Use This Web Site.
2011-06-19 Maintenance: The entire Mechanical Music Press web site was upgraded to be HTML5 compliant, although no HTML5 specific features have yet to be implemented.
2011-06-08 Updated: Wurlitzer Band Organ Ledgers page. Added Bonus Reports: The Wurlitzer All Sources Combined Band Organ Reports (Mechanical Music Registry section).
2011-06-04 New: Added new Philipps Model 3 Paganini page to the Wurlitzer / Philipps Orchestrion Histories section.
2011-05-02 Updated: All database PDF reports have been updated with all required display fonts now embedded, so that reports display correctly on different platforms independently of installed fonts.
2011-04-28 New: Added new Wurlitzer Band Organ Ledgers page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2011-03-25 New: Added new Wurlitzer Direct Drive System page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2010-12-11 New: Added new The de Kleist Journals page to the Mechanical Music Registry section.
2010-07-12 Updated: Wurlitzer Style 32 Concert PianOrchestra from Los Angeles. Added additional paragraph and thumbnail link to PDF copy of the Disney Concert PianOrchestra music roll list.

Updated: Philipps Pianella / Wurlitzer PianOrchestra Tracker-Bar Scales. Added an introductory paragraph and made several corrections to descriptive text.
2010-07-04 New: Mechanical Music Registry — The Mechanical Music Registry project has been implemented to document the technical and historical development of automatic musical instruments, especially coin-operated pianos, orchestrions and band organs.
2010-07-04 Removed: The old PianOrchestra Music Roll Database Project page has been replaced by the new PianOrchestra/Pianella Rollography Project page, which is located in the new Mechanical Music Registry section.
2010-06-15 New: Seeburg Factory Video -- This short video obtained by the late Claes Friberg (Mekanisk Music Museum) is from a silent motion picture clip probably filmed by a European crew circa 1927-1928. This item was subsequently removed due to uncertainty over fair use issues.
2010-04-06 Updated: Wurlitzer PianOrchestra and Paganini Shipping Lists. Added missing information and corrected all newly recognized errors, so that the lists reflect the latest and most complete information.
2010-02-18 New: Added new Home Page to delineate between the Mechanical Music Press and the new Reblitz Restorations sections; and moved The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments book page to its own new, "non-home page" location.
2009-12-03 Updated: Wurlitzer PianOrchestra and Paganini Shipping Lists. Made minor corrections to accuracy of text and updated lists to reflect the latest and most complete information.
2009-08-03 New: Added "printer friendly" style sheets for print media, so that, depending upon the browser used, pages will now be printed without navigation (menu) columns.
2009-06-11 New: Added new Introductory page to the Articles & Stories section of this web site.
2009-06-04 Maintenance: The entire Mechanical Music Press web site was upgraded to comply with the XHTML 1.0 Strict standard.
2009-05-26 New: Added "Web Slices" capability to this page.
2009-01-14 Updated: Links to Resources page by adding a new link in the Books and Recordings section.
2008-11-12 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 33-A Mandolin PianOrchestra originally located in the New York area. Added new thumbnail with link to new image pane containing 2 photographs of the Bontems singing birds.
2008-07-12 Updated: The Herbert Vincent Story. Made addition to the text regarding Leon Blatchley and fixed a formatting error.
2008-04-13 New: The Herbert Vincent Story -- This is the story about a man who worked in and was an integral part of the mechanical music era during its heyday in the Los Angeles, California, area.
2008-04-12 Updated: Memories of a Collector. Made minor corrections to text and added an additional photograph of the Wurlitzer Bijou Orchestra.
2008-04-04 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 32 Concert PianOrchestra. Revised and updated information regarding original shipping location in Los Angeles and Herbert N. Vincent, Glockner Music Company/Wurlitzer Music Company employee.
2008-02-05 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 29-C Mandolin PianOrchestra originally located in Los Angeles, California. Added new restoration information at bottom of page and new thumbnail with link to new image pane containing 14 photographs of the recently restored orchestrion.
2008-01-17 Updated: All new music roll database reports in PDF format for the PianOrchestra Music Roll Project page.
2008-01-02 Updated: Main page for Welte Style 3 Cottage Orchestrion. Added newspaper story from The Republic about the return of the Welte orchestrion to Zaharako's Confectionary.
2007-11-27 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 12 Mandolin PianOrchestra. Added new owner information.
2007-10-15 Maintenance: The entire Mechanical Music Press web site was further upgraded to comply with HTML4.01 Strict standards. Additionally, the SafeSurf Internet Rating (PICS labeling) System was installed.
2007-09-07 Updated: Image pane for Philipps Model "Pfau" Pianella Orchestrion originally located in Belgium. Added text and interior view photograph of restored PianOrchestra to previously existing image pane.
2007-09-06 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 33 Mandolin PianOrchestra discovered in Culver City, California. Corrected and updated text in the sections for the Weber and Krughoff collections. Added thumbnail and link to new image pane containing 8 photographs of the unrestored PianOrchestra in the Rand collection.
2007-08-29 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 29-C Mandolin PianOrchestra originally located in Los Angeles, California. Corrected pipe specification callout, added Pipework Notes section and new thumbnail and link to new image pane containing 2 photographs of the orchestrion in restoration workshop.
2007-08-28 Updated: Main page for Philipps Model 40 Pianella Orchestrion originally located in East Germany. Corrected pipe specification callout, added Pipework Notes section and new thumbnail and link to new image pane containing 12 photographs of the restored exterior and interior components.
2007-08-24 Updated: Main page for Philipps Model 14 Paganini Orchestrion originally located in Brussels, Belgium. Added new thumbnail and link to new image pane containing 12 photographs of the interior components.
2007-08-22 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 32 Concert PianOrchestra originally located in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Added new thumbnail and link to new image pane containing 10 photographs of the interior components.
2007-08-21 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 32-A Concert PianOrchestra originally located in Leadville, Colorado. Added minor text details to main page; added both text and electric motor photographs to image pane #9; added new image pane 13a (showing fire damage to PianOrchestra) and pane 13b (initial restoration work in Milhous workshop).
2007-08-20 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 16 Mandolin PianOrchestra originally located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Added new photographs of interior mechanisms to existing exterior view image pane.
2007-08-19 Updated: Main page for Philipps Model 34 Pianella originally located in Groningen, Holland. Added new thumbnails and links to new image pane 4 and pane 5 containing photographs showing the Cohen collection and interior of the orchestrion.
2007-08-07 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 30-A Mandolin PianOrchestra originally located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Added new thumbnail and link to new image pane containing a photograph showing the exterior of the restored machine.
2007-08-07 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 32 Concert PianOrchestra originally located in Los Angeles, California. Added new thumbnail and link to new image pane containing 14 photographs of the newly restored machine.
2007-07-28 Maintenance: Initiated restructuring and HTML code upgrade for entire Mechanical Music Press web site. Improvements will include correspondence with WCAG Priority 1 & 2 Accessibility standards, and conversion to current HTML4.01 Transitional and CSS 2.1 code standards. The old frames based navigation system is and will be fully replaced by a page based system. Certain minor visual enhancements will also be implemented. This transition is expected to occur incrementally over the next two weeks.

Webmasters: If you have links to this web site other than the home page some of these special cross-links may no longer function correctly, due to file name changes and/or directory relocation required by the restructuring and elimination of all frames type pages.
2006-11-27 Updated: Main page for Welte Style 3 Cottage Orchestrion. Added new owner information.
2005-12-31 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 32-A Concert PianOrchestra originally located in Leadville, Colorado. Included extensive historical and family history about the original owner, John (Bernat) Perme, as provided by the wife of a grandson of the late John Perme.
2004-08-19 Updated: Main page for Wurlitzer Style 32-A Concert PianOrchestra originally located in Leadville, Colorado. Added newly acquired historical information and images provided by a longtime Leadville resident and friend of the John Perme family.
2003-11-08 New: The Vestal Press Story -- The Vestal Press and How It Grew, by Harvey N. Roehl.
2003-11-03 New: Hupfeld Helios III/39 Orchestrion page, with image links to descriptive picture panes.