====== Autophone Company ======
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===== History =====
The Autophone Company of Ithaca, New York, produced organettes from the late 1870s through the mid 1920s. Although Roller Organs were manufactured by The Autophone Company, this was not their first product. Nor was The Autophone Company the first manufacturing operation begun by the inventive men behind it--Henry B. Horton of the Ithaca Calendar Clock Company.{{ manufacturers:autophone:iccc2.jpg?300}} Henry Bishop Horton, born in 1819 in Winchester Connecticut, had exhibited a remarkable taste for music even at an early age. At the age of nineteen, he apprenticed as a cabinet maker for three years, and then engaged in the manufacture of melopeans, instruments somewhat similar to melodeons, a small reed organ. In 1864, H.B. Horton began making significant improvements in calendar clocks, primarily in the accounting for leap year by the mechanism. His first of seventeen eventual patents was issued in 1865, but no existing clock manufacturer would purchase Horton’s ideas. So with Charles D. Johnson, Harvey Platts, and John H. Selkreg, Horton formed the Ithaca Calendar Clock Company, with $800.00 capital, and operated from a rented space. By 1870, production was at the corner of W. State and N. Albany in Ithaca, New York.

The company soon purchased the old county fairground at Adams, Auburn, Franklin, and Dey streets, in 1874, and immediately erected a quadrangle of 3-story buildings, 100 x 130 feet, employing 60 persons and producing 50 clocks daily. In spite of exceptional precautions taken, the building was consumed by fire in 1876. Fortunately, the building was insured and the foundation salvaged, so the building was immediately rebuilt. The company then employed 34 employees, producing 6000 clocks annually. The Ithaca Calendar Clock Company would remain in production until 1918.

In 1879, The Autophone Company was incorporated with $50,000 capital, by President Henry B. Horton, (Judge) Francis M. Finch, and Horace F. Hibbard. The company was initially housed in the Ithaca Calendar Clock Company building, using half of the second floor, in the west wing. Production began immediately, soon turning out 75 organs monthly. Within six months, production and space was doubled, taking the entire second floor. Then as demand continued to increase, the operation eventually expanded to the entire west wing in 1881. Henry A. St. John, recently returned to the area, became a stockholder in 1881. In 1882 the company produced 15,000 small instruments and 3,000 others.

By 1883, The Autophone Company was employing a workforce of 45 persons, and doubling that number prior to the pre-holiday season, surpassing that of the Ithaca Calendar Clock Company.{{manufacturers:autophone:iccc.jpg?300 }} The unique music was cut on five custom presses, the company supposedly being the only manufacturer who produced their own music. Although known brochures list fewer that 350 tunes, a contemporary historian records that in 1883 "the catalogue of music prepared for the Autophone now embraces nearly 1,000 tunes--sacred and instrumental music, popular airs and the operas ..."

Henry B. Horton retired in April 1883, the reorganized company having purchased his patents for a "snug sum". The new officers of The Autophone Company were then F.M. Finch, President, H.A. St. John, Vice President, and H.M. Hibbard, Treasurer. Business continued to thrive, and significant exports had begun. For example, a single order to Australia in 1884 consisted of over $2,000.00 for instruments and music--the music, if laid end to end, nearly 4-1/2 miles in length.

Henry B. Horton died in December 1885, but by then The Autophone Company was already manufacturing the [[:instruments:organette:roller_organ:]]. President Henry A. Horton and Secretary Horace M. Hibbard knew that to remain competitive in a growing market, a new design was needed. The inventive superintendent of The Autophone Company, Henry B. Morris, was given the directive to research a design for a new automatic musical instrument. It was a difficult task: the method for playing the music must be more durable and dependable than paper, yet sold at a popular price. By September, 1884, a prototype "pinning machine" had already been constructed.

The year of 1888 was a year of drastic change for The Autophone Company. In January, Henry Morris left Ithaca and his position of Superintendent to move to Hornellsville, N.Y. There he began work for the Rawson Manufacturing Company. But this was not loss to The Autophone Company because it was the Rawson Manufacturing Co., under Morris' eye, who received the order to produce the machinery for pinning rollers. By late 1888 the third pinning machine would be built, each machine pinning 12 rollers simultaneously, and 1,000 to 1,200 rollers daily. Mr. Morris left the Rawson Mfg. Co. in mid-November of the same year, pursuing other personal endeavors. (Morris' initial enterprise was to form the Morris Weaving Company, of Geneva, N.Y., whose machinery produced wire netting. He later managed the Western Cane Seating company, of Michigan City, Indiana, where his machinery cut and wove sheets of manila fiber into strands or braids of patented material primarily used as chair caning.)

Meanwhile, in March of 1888, Dr. L.A. Barber, a dentist of Groton, N.Y., purchased the Autophone patents and machinery from The Autophone Company, moving manufacturing to Groton, and establishing a business as "L.A. Barber & Co., manfrs. of Autophones". With the new influx of capital, in early 1889 the first vacuum-operated roller organs began to appear. With President Henry A. Horton and Secretary H.M. Hibbard, the company was immediately producing and selling 14,000 to 18,000 organs and 200,000 to 250,000 rollers per year. By 1891, the President was Henry A. St. John (who was also the third Mayor of Ithaca, serving from 1892-1893), and the Secretary and Treasurer H.M. Hibbard. Their catalog then contained over 500 tunes. The company still operated out of three stories of the ICCC building, 120 x 200 feet, employing 45 workers. In 1892, the Gem Roller Organ model advertised "50,000 in use". By 1894 the officers were President Henry A. St. John, Treasurer H.M. Hibbard, and Secretary W.F. Finch. By 1897, the catalog contained 800 titles of rollers, in 1898 over 1,000. At some point, business had increased so that a separate three-story building was erected exclusively for The Autophone Company.

The competition and changing society took their toll on The Autophone Company. By 1916, advertising had disappeared in all but the larger catalogs. The workforce had dwindled to only 20 persons, less than half of previous numbers. By 1920, The Autophone Company, still under the presidency of St. John, was operating out of a building on Third Street. By the mid 1920s, the roller organ was hopelessly out of date with the wants of society. The Autophone Company closed its doors in late 1925.

===== Products =====
Product lines included:
  *[[:instruments:organette:autophone:]]
  *[[:instruments:organette:roller_organ:]]

===== References =====
  *Augsburger, Todd. //Roller Organs--The Autophone Company's "Ingenious Mechanism"//, 2003. 

===== External Links =====
  *[[http://www.rollerorgans.com/Roller_Organ_History.htm|A brief history at Todd Augsburger's Roller Organ Website]]
  *[[http://ithacacalendarclock.com/1875NEWSPAPERSTORY.html|1875 news article about the history of the Ithaca Calendar Clock Co.]]