Welcome to the Automatophone Room. Here we showcase mechanical musical instruments from the period between 1800 and 1930. Before MP3 players, CDs or vinyl records, they played music and were powered by hand or clockwork mechanisms. They operated on the basis of a storage medium. Most of the instruments you can see here were made in Berlin. Among them is our "Fratihymnia", a unique Orchestrion. It was created around 1900 by the company Cocchi, Bacigalupo & Graffigna. It used to play in the "Wine and Beer Restaurant Genoa" in Schönhauser Allee. Since 1962 it’s the highlight of our collection. The Fratihymnia can sound like a whole orchestra. Its interior contains about 16 different instruments, including a piano, chimes and a xylophone. It also imitates violins and flutes. Its storage medium is a music roll: a perforated piece of paper. That determines at what time any instrument sounds. This Orchestrion plays operas, marches, folk songs and dance music. The end for mechanical instruments came in the 1920ies. Because radios and records were better able to reproduce music true to the original. But in the museum the automatophones still tell their story and enchant us with their music.