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ALUMNI
KUEHN’S MAGNIFICENT MECHANICAL
MUSIC MACHINES
Some people collect stamps or coins
or comic books. For more than 30
years, ME Professor Emeritus Tom Kuehn (BME ‘71, MS ‘72, PhD ‘76) has collected and restored mechanical musical instruments. The ME Alumni Network (ME-AN) took a tour of Kuehn’s mechanical musical instrument museum for their fall get-together.
If you thought mechanical engineers had nothing to do with making music, you have not visited the Kuehn collection of Magnificent Mechanical Music Machines. Motors, shafts, belts, and pulleys are used to play pianos, pipe organs, violins, xylophones, and more. These machines provided live musical entertainment in homes and commercial venues using
prearranged tunes on non-electronic digital storage media including pinned cylinders, projections from rotating disks, punched cardboard, and perforated paper rolls.
Guests toured Kuehn’s collection and listened to the Wurlitzer carousel organ playing show tunes such as “The Music Man” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” along with old favorites like “In the Good Old Summertime” and “A Bicycle Built for Two.”
If you would like to learn more about ME-AN and future events, contact Jennifer Clarke at jclarke@umn.edu or 612-626-9354.
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