Ever since I pinned my first disk for a music box, I have thought it a
wonderful idea to be able to use an independent player for a music box
by which the instrument can be played manually or through other means.
This requires that the star wheels be rotated smoothly and gently at
approximately the right speed so that the damping and release are
similar to that produced by the passing disk.

If anyone would send me a Stella mechanism and a few reference disks, I
would gladly draw up an arrangement which would fill the requirements
mentioned.

My concept is to use a roller-mechanical action which we have heard
described before, and which is most familiarly used in old IBM type-bar
typewriters in an astonishingly noisy and complex embodiment. A roller
is in continuous motion. A trigger brings a mechanical device into
contact with the roller. The device takes power from the roller and
transmits it to the musical escapement. The device returns and is ready
to play again.  This is especially well suited to the musical box since
the speed of the device is precisely controlled, it must fully return
before it can repeat, and it cannot be teased into repeating early.

The music box is the only acoustic percussion instrument, to my
knowledge, which has not had a manual version, all the others having
started out as manual instruments, becoming automated as an
afterthought.  The celeste, harpsichord and clavichord are often used
to simulate the music box in the musical literature, but what a shadow
of the true sound these instruments give, however fine they may be in
their own right.

Please file this one away as a Disclosure of Invention, so the Patent
Office has its properly dated evidence and they can start looking
through old Swiss patents to predate this.

OK, where's that Stella?

Karl.