The Mechanical Orguinette Company (MOC) -- later to become the Aeolian
Company -- started as a retailer of instruments made for them by others.
Elias Needham was one, the Munroe Organ Reed Company was another. So
there is no conflict in seeing the Mechanical Orguinette Company retail
name on a Needham instrument.

A copyright case brought by John McTammany established that his name
had to be placed on instruments made by Munroe using his ideas, so there
can be a good number of different names on something to confuse matters.
McTammany and Needham tussled over copyrights in the later 1870s.

Rex Lawson wrote in the Pianola Journal, volume 11, that "Robert Pain,
mainstay of the Aeolian Company's experimental department for many
years, left testimony in his own hand that he conceived the idea of
a roll-operated reed organ between 1874 and 1876 as a young engineer
in the employ of Carhart & Needham of New York. He states that an
experimental twenty-note instrument, using perforated paper as a valve,
was made by him in 1877, and called the 'Celestina', and that this model
and many more like it was [sic] made for and sold by the [Mechanical]
Orguinette Co."

The genius of Frank Morgan (and later, H P Tremaine) was to buy up his
suppliers when the opportunity arose. He bought out Needham in January
1880, so later instruments were MOC's own production. Munroe (who made
the 'Aeolian' at that time) was purchased in 1887 after it failed.
Consolidation at that point with the Automatic Music Paper Co. and
building a new factory at Meriden [Connecticut] integrated in-house
production of instruments and rolls.

Julian Dyer