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Barrel organ
Mechanical musical instrument / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A barrel organ (also called roller organ or crank organ) is a French[1] mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated. The basic principle is the same as a traditional pipe organ, but rather than being played by an organist, the barrel organ is activated either by a person turning a crank, or by clockwork driven by weights or springs. The pieces of music are encoded onto wooden barrels (or cylinders), which are analogous to the keyboard of the traditional pipe organ. A person (or in some cases, a trained animal) who plays a barrel organ is known as an organ grinder.
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