[Phono-L] Young Collectors & middle school kids

[Andrew Baron]

Jim's observation reminds me how incredibly receptive the middle  
school kids were to a presentation on the Maillardet Automaton that I  
did last March 31.

I was brought out to Connecticut for this for this event, which  
entailed presentations to three middle schools with auditoriums filled  
with 13 year olds, and one impromptu partial presentation that I was  
asked to do for a very small hand-picked gathering at a high school  
that was associated with one of the middle schools.  All in all, some  
800 kids saw this presentation.

The presentation involved lots of still images and a number of video  
clips of the actual artifact, and touched on its connection to, and my  
involvement with, the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret", by Brian  
Selznick.  This book was the selected title for a "one town, one  
read", or "town-wide read" program, and was the reason they brought me  
out.

I was nervous about this age group, but the response was  
overwhelmingly positive and my host forwarded a number of emails from  
teachers at these schools who also were amazed that the kids emerged  
talking excitedly about historical perspective and antique machines.

Maybe it's no coincidence that many of us discovered our own first  
attractions to antique phonograph and music machines at about that age.

  The Maillardet Automaton is sort of a distant cousin to a music box,  
built in the early 19th century, and although it has mechanism that's  
familiar to most of us (main springs, gears, governors, levers, etc.),  
the mechanism us put to an extraordinarily different use.  Some of the  
more hard-core music box collectors and historians are aware of it,  
and some computer folks who view its extensive mechanical memory as  
being a forerunner to modern computers.

Needless to say, it was humbling and extremely rewarding to have  
gotten such positive feedback from this age group on such an esoteric  
subject, and a subject completely outside their usual frame of  
reference.

Andy Baron

On Jun 28, 2009, at 4:46 AM, edisonstuff at comcast.net wrote:
> Hello Group,
>              Recently a local newspaper did a story about my  
> collection of Edison Phonographs & that resulted in some school  
> children visiting with their teachers, I had two groups middle  
> school & High school. The middle school kids were fascinated by the  
> machines especially the coin operated one, The HS kids couldn't have  
> cared less ! The middle school class went on to visit "The Johnson  
> Victrola Museum " at a later date & were just overwhelmed, Did we  
> recruit a new age of collectors ? Who knows but the seed was at  
> least planted, since then one child has brought his parents back to  
> show them & we talk from time to time.
>
> Jim G.