[boxdoctor]

I had one of these instruments on my "patch", and was not saddened to see it dissappear when the city centre pub it was in was burnt down.
The chap who played it was very proficient, but the machine was very unreliable!
Just slightly O.T.,
A similarly unpleasant mechanical tone generator was used in the Optigan organ.
This used an optical disc to store the waveforms of the sounds.
The company I worked for unfortunately became the local agents for this device, and caused me, as the sole service engineer, much "Weeping, and gnashing of teeth" to put it biblically. Dust and smoke deposits on the disc plagued them, even though they had some degree of protection against that.
The reliability was atrocious, and we abandoned them quite quickly, thank goodness. Tony.