The collection contains the following categories of automatic musical instruments:

Musical clocks, announcing the striking of the hour with their music (on bells, pipes or strings);

Musical boxes, playing their pinned cylinders, steel discs and folding music books on the tuned steel teeth of a musical comb;

Reed instruments, such as harmoniums and accordions, sounding their brass reeds from cylinders, discs and perforated rolls;

String instruments, sounding their strings from pinned cylinders or perforated paper rolls (the automatic spinet, cylinder piano or roll-playing pianola);

Orchestrions, playing their music from pinned cylinders or perforated paper rolls on a variety of instruments that are combined within an enclosing case;

Organs, playing their music from pinned cylinders or folding music books, varying from the street organ and fairground organ to the dance hall organ.