I absolutely adore shopping for home goods. For instance, I like to look for artwork, accent pillows, vases, sheets, comforters, rugs, and towels at my favorite retailers. Have you recently purchased a new home? Perhaps, you need to shop for items to fill your new house with. Before shopping for home furnishings, be sure to take correct measurements. For example, before searching for blinds, you’ll need to first measure your windows. Before looking for a sofa to place in your living room, you’ll likely wish to measure the width of this space. On this blog, I hope you will discover ingenious tips to help you buy beautiful, home goods for your place. Enjoy!
Shopping for Home Furnishings
How Does A Music Box Work?
Dan Stewart
Music boxes range from the little ballerina jewelry box that just about every little girl ends up with, to amazingly beautiful and complex pieces of art. It doesn't matter what the music box looks like on the outside, they all work in the same way.
History of Music Boxes
The modern music box comes from the musical snuff boxes that were carried by the fashionable gentlemen of the 1700s. No fashionable gentlemen would have been without his snuff box since it was a sign of his wealth and style. The more ornate and complicated the box, the more important the person. And having a snuff box that was really fancy on the outside and could play music would be a definite statement. The thing about those music boxes and today's music boxes is that they operate in almost the exact same way.
Springs and Winding Key
Most music boxes are wind-ups. That means that they have a key that you turn until you can feel that there is enough tension and won't turn anymore. The winding key is attached to a spring inside the box. As the key is turned, it creates tension on the spring and it winds tighter and tighter. When the spring releases, it turns a metal cylinder.
Metal Cylinder and Steel Comb
The metal cylinder inside the music box has a series of pins sticking out of it. Those pins are set in a particular order. The order of the pins is what determines the song that gets played. The way that it works is that as the metal cylinder spins, the pins hit a steel comb. The prongs of the comb are different lengths. The comb isn't usually set straight on because all the prongs need to be touching the cylinder or it won't play. The different lengths of the comb are what makes the actual notes. The shorter lengths make higher pitched notes, the longer lengths make the lower pitched notes. The more prongs the comb has, the more complex the music can be. In addition to the cylinder and comb, some of the more complex music boxes also include things like small drums or bells in order to add more depth to the music.
Music boxes have been around for centuries. They have been used to create parlor music and to amuse small children. They are very well-engineered pieces of technology for something that seems so simple.
Contact a company like The Music House for more information and assistance.
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