Gem Roller Organ

A popular form of home entertainment, the Gem Roller Organ offered late 19th century working and middle-class homes an affordable alternative to parlour organs. This hand-cranked, vacuum pressure organ used pinned wooden rollers—similar to the cylinders used in Swiss music boxes—to play songs. Often called “cobs” because they resembled an eaten cob of corn, the rollers were embedded with dozens of pins that operated on valve keys to produce a 20-note song while being turned by a gear.