I had the pleasure of going to the Netherlands in 2023.

Amsterdam and Rotterdam are cool, but Utrecht has something really special, The Speelkok (Self playing instrument) Museum.

There’s so much cool stuff in there, automata, the only self playing violin, clocks, draaiorgels (street organs), but the coolest is this.

That is a 1930s dance hall machine. It takes in a cardboard book with hole punches. The music is encoded as punches, each hole means to play that note from the music staff. It replaced music barrels, metal barrals with nubs that hit forks from music boxes, since they could dynamically program the song.

But somehow someone hooked up a laptop to it! So now it can play mp3s from a laptop instead of the book. What?!

How, why and who are a total mystery to me, but I’d like to find out more.

I’ve sent the museum an email and hope to hear back for more info. It’ll take about 14 business days. If you know anything about this please reach out.

Maybe the internet can help me figure this out?

- Chris