Museum of music automatons, Musical instrument museum in Seewen, Switzerland.
The Museum of Music Automatons in Seewen displays Swiss mechanical music machines spanning roughly 200 years, including cylinder and disc music boxes, musical clocks, and jewelry with built-in movements. The collection illustrates the technical evolution and construction of these machines.
Heinrich Weiss-Stauffacher began collecting music boxes and automatons around 1950; his private museum opened in Seewen in 1979. He donated the collection to the Swiss Confederation in 1990 on condition it stay in Seewen. A 2000 extension doubled the exhibition space, and Christoph E. Hänggi directs the institution.
The exhibition title reflects how Swiss craftspeople invented ways to store and play music through mechanical means. Visitors encounter the machines in their original settings and watch demonstrations that show how the engineering actually works.
The museum welcomes visitors from Tuesday to Sunday between 11:00 and 18:00, with guided tours included in admission. Allow time for demonstrations that show how the machines actually work.
The museum's Welte Philharmonic organ was built around 1913 for the Britannic, a sister ship of the Titanic, and probably installed in 1914 before being removed when the ship was requisitioned for the First World War. During its 2007 restoration, inscriptions such as "BRITANIK REGISTER" were found in nine places. Its roughly 1,500 original piano rolls were digitized in 2012 with Bern University of Applied Sciences, so the organ can now be played by computer.
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