Oh, absolutely. The earliest ones are basically brass cylinders and a single winding key, the rest of the mechanism a neat, almost child‑like puzzle. By the Victorian era the boxes became a mini‑factory—multiple cylinders, hidden gears, and a tiny tuning fork to keep the whole thing in pitch. The layout changed to accommodate more tunes, so the gears were layered like a small Swiss watch. In the 20th century, with mass production, the design streamlined again; the gears got smaller, the tuning mechanisms turned from hand‑adjusted to pre‑set. I’ve already filed every variation by year, maker, and even by the exact pitch of the tuning fork. Let’s pull up the catalog and see how those tiny cogs evolved.

It’s a fun little experiment—my files already have the gear ratios down to the millimeter. The early brass cylinders had a simple 1:1 gear, barely enough to keep the tune from stuttering, but the Swiss‑watch style later on added a 3‑to‑2 reduction that actually tightened the timing by a few percent. The extra gears didn’t just look fancy; they made the mechanism a bit smoother and less jittery. Let me pull up the comparative charts and we can see the numbers for real.

Sure thing, I’ve already sorted the charts by region—there are a couple of outliers from the Alpine workshops where they keep the ratio a little higher to accommodate the cooler air, but most of the Swiss‑watch makers stick to 3:2. The smoothing holds up pretty well, just a tiny tweak here and there. Ready to dive into the data?