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The very first boxes at the end of the 18th century made use of metal disks. The switchover to cylinders seems to have been complete after the Napoleonic wars. In the last decades of the 19th century, however, mass-produced models such as the ''Polyphon'' and others all made use of interchangeable metal disks instead of cylinders. The cylinder-based machines rapidly became a minority.
[[Image:Baud museum mg 8498.jpg|thumb|Mechanical piano combined with strings. There are three violins each with only one string. Thus only tunes that do not require the missing forth string can be played.]]
[[Image:Baud museum mg 8461.jpg|thumb|[[Orchestrion]]]]
The term "musical box" is also applied to clockwork devices where a removable metal disk or cylinder was used only in a "programming" function without producing the sounds directly by means of pins and a comb. Instead, the cylinder (or disk) worked by actuating bellows and levers which fed and opened pneumatic valves which activated a modified [[wind instrument]] or plucked the chords on a modified [[string instrument]]. Some devices could do both at the same time and were often combinations of player pianos and musical boxes, such as the [[Orchestrion]].
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The small 18-note musical movements are now being made almost exclusively in countries with low labour costs such as [[China]] and [[Taiwan]]. Many of these productions are used in mobiles, children's musical toys, and jewelry boxes.
== Coin-operated musical boxes ==
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