"Portable" Orchestra?

This article at Collector's Weekly describes them, portable machines in the early 20th century called "orchestrions" that went a step beyond player pianos by having bells and pipes that could sound like stringed instruments as well as brass and woodwinds. One of them, shown in a picture towards the bottom of the page, even had violins mounted inside and played mechanically. Not many exist today, which is why the story is at a site called "Collector's Weekly."

In this case, portable was definitely in the eye of the beholder. The average orchestrion weighed in at two tons. While that was lighter and took up less space than an actual orchestra, it wasn't the kind of thing you could clip on your belt for your morning perambulation.

Like the player piano, the orchestrion played its songs as a paper roll punched with holes was fed through a reading device. The holes controlled which instrument would play and what note would sound. Punch cards, in use in computers up until thirty or so years ago, operated not too differently.

Anyone familiar with the names of piano, organ or jukebox makers will see some recognizable labels in the story, like Wurlitzer and Seeburg. There are interesting parallel to some modern music-player history. Seeburg machines took off in popularity when they developed a standardized roll that could be played on multiple machines, kind of the way the .mp3 format came to dominate online music sales and playing. The standard roll also broadened the variety of music available on orchestrions, as more people than just the Seeburg company could create them for different songs.

The combination of Prohibition, which reduced the size of the places where people wanted background music playing while they partied and phonographs and radio, which could provide smaller music-makers as well as add the human voice into the mix, did in the orchestrion in most venues.

Plus, they had no headphone jack and the loud tunes -- as always -- tended to tick off the 'rents.