When you visit our unique museum, with its focus on clocks made and sold in Canada from the 1820s to the present time, you can also HEAR old music record players.

We have Edison music cylinder record players (operating on windup springs, with celluloid plastic BLUE AMBEROL records), including an outside 'flowers' horn model from about 1905 and a 1920 AMBEROLA 75 floor model with its horn inside.

The Amberol records contained up to four minutes of music in their up-and-down grooves; the grooves were followed with a small smooth sapphire stylus linked to a diaphragm.  There were no electronics, just a metal horn inside to project the sound.  There is also a spring-driven 1920s floor model that plays Thomas Edison's very thick, flat records dating from the late 1910s to the late 1920s.  Ask to see the volume control for the inside metal horn!

Do you remember the old 78 RPM flat shellac plastic records?  Hundreds of millions of them were pressed over many decades from the late 1890s up to 1960.  In the early years, replaceable sacrificial steel needles tracked the grooves during playback.  Yes, that means there was a decade overlap at the end with vinyl LPs and those large-hole-in the-middle 45s that were the source of 'pop' music in the 1950s.

The 10 inch diameter 78s had up to three minutes of music and songs on each side in their side-to-side grooves - the cost was typically 50 cents to a dollar each.  The larger, 12 inch records had up to four minutes per side, and there were typically albums with sets of three or four or more of these if you enjoyed symphonies or opera.   At lower cost, smaller Little Wonder hard plastic 78s records were produced in the millions around 1910 - they were just ten cents each, but there was music on one side only and the performers were anonymous.

One major maker of record players was the Victor Talking Machine Company in New Jersey.  Their products were imported through Montreal by their Canadian company for the Canadian market.

There is an operating ca. 1910 STERLING Disc Graphophone 78s player with outside metal horn made in the United States by the Columbia Graphophone Company.  This spring-driven model also uses steel needles and has a swivel horn that can be turned to direct the sound.

Enjoy the surprisingly impressive sound out of our top-of-the-line and very expensive 1926 CREDENZA floor model 78s record player with its folded wood horn inside and original electric motor upgrade.  The cost back then was about $400, when you could buy a FORD automobile for that price!  Of course, less expensive players were available from Victor and other makers.

The CREDENZA was made by the Victor Talking Machine Company in New Jersey (before the RCA / Victor merger in 1929).  Our example, which still uses replaceable steel needles, was sold in Ottawa at the Orme Furniture store by the Montreal-based Victor Talking Machine Company of Canada Limited that imported Victor players for the Canadian market back then.  The Orme store is still in business today.

An early keyboard pump organ: we have a ca. 1870 George Prince & Co. brass-reeds melodeon that you are welcome to sit down and play.  Ivory keys.  Steadily pump the right hand pedal to put air into the bellows and make beautiful music.

In the 1960s the Electrohome company in Kitchener, Ontario was designing and manufacturing 'space age' players for vinyl records based on Canadian design patents.  The plastic-dome top table model with spherical stereo speakers was called APOLLO.  It was available with or without an electric radio built in.  The floor model with the same speakers was called SATURN.  Do you remember the American moon landing in 1969?  The Apollo capsule was sent there by the massive Saturn rocket.

See the pictures below.  During your tour, ASK TO HEAR THE MAGIC!