Around 1770, a Swiss watchmaker rigged a tiny comb that could be plucked by a gear in a watch's movement to produce a melody. Small music boxes like this one were placed in decorated seals, cane tops, jewelry boxes, snuffboxes and a variety of luxury items. Later, music boxes became larger, while remaining popular household instruments, until they were replaced in the 20th century by the phonograph and player piano.

As a young boy, Joseph Schumacher, BE '64M, stumbled upon one of the venerable music machines in his family's attic and was intrigued by both the beauty of the hand-crafted device and its enchanting music. Today, he and his wife, Lenora, have assembled an extensive collection of music boxes that spans three centuries.

"I ran an ad in our company's newsletter in 1967 and a fellow responded, so I went to his home and purchased my first music box," recalls Schumacher, a retired senior accountant with Hercules Inc. "My wife and I then began to pick up a number of them at antique shops and flea markets on trips to New England. Back then, you never knew where you would find one."

Beyond displaying his collection, Schumacher tinkers with each music box to understand how it was put together, and he then cleans and repairs it as needed.

Author of more than 40 articles on automatic music boxes published in the Music Box Society International Journal, Schumacher explains that there are two main groups of music boxes in his collection--cylinder and disc--both wound by a key or lever.

"The cylinder box was crafted in the early to mid-1800s in Switzerland," he says. "The box uses a steel comb of graduated, tuned teeth. Each tooth represents a musical note. The cylinder is studded with tiny pins and, as it rotates, the pins slap the teeth of the comb, causing a vibration that disperses music."

The disc box, which originated in Germany in 1885, Schumacher says, revolutionized the industry since it could be inexpensively mass-produced. In the disc box, music is implanted on a flat metal disc by perforating its surface in the desired places. As the disc rotates, a point strikes an intersecting star wheel, which then plucks a tooth of the musical steel comb. Most music boxes play for from one to three minutes.

Schumacher says he always is interested in learning more about how vibrations produce sounds, how sound is amplified and how mechanical energy is changed to sound. The musical pitch of the music box comes from plucking the long teeth for lower tones and short teeth for higher ones, he says, and the loudness of the sound is determined by the width of the teeth.

Music boxes range in price from $200 for a small, simple one to $4,000 for a 15-1/2-inch Regina model to $12,000 for a Regina with an automatic disc changer. Schumacher's criteria for purchasing a music box include the item's age, style, historical background, movement, music, place of purchase, quality and distinctive features.

His music boxes come in all shapes and sizes. The smallest fits inside a silver cufflink, and the largest is a 6-foot, 10-inch-high by 6-foot, 1-inch-wide oak cabinet he built that houses a bass drum, wood block, accordion, tambourine, cymbal and a pair of snare drums. When he taps a small button on the cabinet, which took nine months to construct, John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," a variety of polkas and other musical scores resonate from rolls similar to those used in a player piano.

In the corner of the Schumacher living room is a chair that begins to play when a person sits in it. His oldest piece is a bird organ with pewter pipes from the early 1700s. Its extremely high-pitched sound was once used to teach canaries to sing, Schumacher says. His favorite piece is a Stella model set in a cabinet with 19-inch discs stored in the bottom. He delights in hearing its resonating sound a long time after the music device is finished playing.

"My wife and I have gotten so much enjoyment out of this hobby," he says. "We've met wonderful people from all over the world, and a lot of them have come and stayed at our home."

In September, Schumacher was honored at the 50th aniversary convention of the Musical Box Society International with its President's Award. The honor recognizes meritorious and long-standing service in the furtherance of the society's ideals and goals.