Musical boxes play their melodies by plucking the tuned steel teeth of a comb. This is done by the steel pins on a rotating cylinder or by the punched-out projections of a metal disc.
The cylinder musical box was invented in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1796 by clockmaker Antoine Favre, who patented his 'carillon without bells or hammers': a series of metal teeth sounded by a musical cylinder. The musical disc box was developed in Leipzig, Germany, in the late 1880s.
Comb-playing musical instruments exist in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and qualities, varying from miniature musical snuff boxes andautomatic acrobats to crystal decanters, paintings, sewing boxes or even a miniature Delft windmill.