About This Web Site

Hathaway & Associates is a nothing more than a convenient and arbitrary name for a loose collection of mutually independent people who may, from time to time, voluntarily associate under what may seem to be a generic title for a common interest, good, and goal. It is not a legal entity, nor does it, of itself, represent any person or entity, or conduct any type of business, commerce, or make or cause to be made any binding representations, commitments, or contractual arrangements. There is no facility, office, staff, assets, or anything else; not even a mailing address. Any and all persons, whether actual, implied, or construed as associated with Hathaway & Associates, this site, and/or the author of this site are to be considered as independent entities and, as such, any arrangement with any one particular individual shall not in any way bind, effect, or reflect upon any other individual.

General Policy

This web site does not attempt to collect, market, or otherwise use any visitor information. Any contact information shared or referenced within this site is either (1) public information available elsewhere, or is (2) specifically authorized by the person or entity mentioned. Some minimal technical information is known to be collected by the Internet Service Provider that hosts this web site, so as to provide statistical visitor information.

External web sites accessed through links located under the headings of Friends of Hathaworld and/or Mechanical Music are wholly independent entities who are provided a link within this web site solely as a courtesy. There is no commercial affiliation or interaction of any kind, and therefore any mention and/or representation suggested within these externally independent web site are not to be construed as any kind or type of legal or financial relationship. This web site and its author is not responsible for the policy, actions, or decisions by any implied or the above referenced external entities.

Privacy Policy

This web site does not attempt to collect, maintain, process, market, or share any visitor information. Any contact information shared or referenced within this site is either (1) public information available and/or advertised elsewhere, or is (2) specifically authorized by the person or entity mentioned.

Some minimal anonymous statistical information is known to be routinely collected by the Internet Service Provider hosting this web site, such as browser type, referring URL, site file access information, etc. This information is used to analyze usage trends and provide visitor statistics, which is occasionally accessed to analyze and improve site layout and performance. No "cookies" are set or used by this web site, but it is possible that the hosting service unbeknownst to us may independently choose to set a cookie for reasons entirely unknown to the authors of this web site.

Evolution of This Site

This website began circa 1997 using Microsoft’s FrontPage HTML editor and website administration tool (1996-2006) and it still retains some design elements from those early days. Then, once Microsoft’s new Web Expression software (2006-2012) replaced FrontPage, the convoluted code automatically generated by FrontPage was meticulously untangled and simplified. Then, when Web Expression was no longer being maintained and fell out of favor, the html code was ported over to accommodate Adobe’s Dreamweaver CS6`software, and from there on to the latest Dreamweaver version in Adobe’s Creative Cloud series, where it remains to this day. All HTML coding and maintenance is still done by hand and is currently optimized for the HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) standard. There are no behind the scenes connected databases, nothing fancy or complicated to maintain, just plain and simple hand-written and maintained HTML5 code, and so if the website seems quaint or old-fashioned that is because it is, and there is no inclination to change its underlying simplicity.

After many years of intense private and commercial interest in mechanical music, mainly between the years of 1950 to 1980, other endeavors took precedence. Then, in 1997 a resurgence of excitement regarding automatic music machines brought about a renewed fervor to write about and further research and share some of the stories about many of my old mechanical music friends. Thus, this web site came into existence as a way of sharing my rekindled enthusiasm for automatic music, and also because of my love of working with computers as a communicative tool for sharing certain aspects of my life with others.

When this site commenced operation in 1997, it was primarily dedicated to research and data collection in regards to the J.D. Philipps Pianella / Wurlitzer PianOrchestra line of self-playing automatic orchestras. The PianOrchestra research project, as it was then called, was originally a strictly academic affair, and, as such, was committed to acquiring historical information and related stories about the companies and the people associated with various automated music machines, adding to what is already known and then sharing that information with historians and other interested parties. Later, certain aspects of the historical work evolved into making available tangible items, such as a limited series of educational custom audio compact disc albums of assorted, outstanding examples of automatic musical instruments, which included coin-in-the-slot pianos, orchestrions, dance organs, and fair organs. This audio activity was discontinued in early 2005.

Contact Information

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