When in 1864 merchant Leopold Bial founded a bookstore in Breslau, he perhaps did not anticipate that the business would in time transition to a new but promising commercial model: mail-order sales. Leopold and his successors soon expanded their offerings and the catalog for Bial & Freund, their mail-order business headquartered at Taunetzienstraße 16 (Tadeusza Kościuszki Street), included musical instruments, gramophones, cameras, typewriters, firearm, binoculars, and this symphonion – a self-playing device reading music from tin plates. The company also continued to sell books, and upon acquiring the rights from the Leipzig publishing house Brockhaus to distribute its popular lexicon, it branded the spines of the volumes with the name Bial & Freund.