My interest in disc musical boxes

I remember it clearly. I was a student at Leicester polytechnic in 1984. One Sunday two friends and I decided to have a walk up the Grand Union canal. On the outskirts of the city we found the Abbey pumping station which was an impressive sewage treatment plant built to resemble a grand country house and now a technology museum The interior had been preserved and the impressive steam driven pumps were marvels of Victorian engineering maintained in full working order. Also on display was an impressive collection of vintage vehicles and I separated from my two friends to have a closer look. There were cars, delivery vans, a fire engine, motor cycles and even a couple of trams. Near the back of the display area was a darker area and something caught my eye. It looked a bit like a grandfather clock but much wider and there was no facility to tell the time. It stood about 6 feet tall. What was this? I looked closer and noticed a silver coloured large diameter disc sitting inside the glass fronted cabinet door. There was lettering on the disc printed in a style that was full of Victorian flourishes. ‘There’ll come a time’ by Charles K Harris. I looked closer. The wood was showing signs of great age but it was full of figure and interesting grain patterns. On the upper part of the cabinet, incised into the wood was the name Polyphon. A typed card sat inside the glass cabinet instructing the insertion of a penny would play the music. Also typed underneath was the information that a Victorian penny could be purchased for 50 pence. That’s inflation for you I thought. But I couldn’t resist. I found a curator who furnished me with a large Victorian penny in exchange for my 50 pence and I went back to the Polyphon. Everything that followed in the next couple of minutes was the start of a love affair with these wonderful machines. The rackety, clackety, tinny sound as I inserted the coin into the chute; the momentary pause as the clockwork motor started to purr and the first astounding and quite unexpectedly rich sound of the music as it played. I didn’t know the tune but I loved it straight away as it represented the sound of the past and conjured up memories of my late grandfather. This was the music he would have heard. I was hooked. I played it again for my friends and even returned the following weekend with a tape recorder to capture that sound and the memories it evoked.