music box (redirected from musical box)

music box

German music box, with disk in playing position, from Leipzig, c. 1900

(credit: Courtesy of the Musical Wonder House, Wiscasset, Maine; photograph, John Spinks)

Mechanical musical instrument in which projecting pins on a revolving brass cylinder or disk, encoding a piece of music, pluck tuned steel tongues. It was probably invented c. 1780 in Switzerland. With its modular cylinders or disks, it was a popular domestic instrument until displaced by the player piano and phonograph.