-- forwarded message, please reply to sender and MMD --

Dear Mr. Kravitz,  I just got your email address off the Internet.
I hope you don't mind my writing to ask for your help.

I inherited from my parents a mechanical music machine which they
called an "autoharp".  I haven't managed to locate any information
about it so far.  It's shaped like a very small grand piano, but it has
no legs.  It's about two feet long and 18 inches wide at the widest
point.

On the right end (the treble end), paper rolls like piano rolls are
wound manually over the strings.  At the left end (the longer side) are
about 7 sets of strings which you strum across with your thumb, from
the bass up, to give fixed chords.  The strings are made of coiled
wire, like piano strings.

There are numbers on the music rolls which tell you which number chord
to play as the roll is wound on.  The chords are labelled below the
strings in German, which makes me think it must be a German machine,
though there's no maker's name that I can see.

There is a serial number (I don't have it in front of me) which is four
thousand and something, so presumably it was produced in a factory.

Most of the paper rolls have French titles and it looks as if they were
imported from France to London, England, maybe in the 1910s or 1920s.

If you have any information or ideas on where I might continue
searching I'd be very grateful.

Yours sincerely

Alison Burroughes
St Albans, Herts., UK