What became nationally the best known manufacturing institution ever
developed in Ithaca was gaining a firm footing in those years. The Seth
Thomas Clock Company had purchased the right to Akins' original calendar
clock in 1863, but Henry B. Horton, loath to see the work abandoned
here, was experimenting with new improvements in the old product. He
overcame minor imperfections in the mechanism and patented his
inventions in 1864 and 1865.
   Three years later, the Ithaca Calendar Clock Company was incorporated
with John H. Selkreg, Samuel P. Sherwood and William J. Storms as
president, vice-president and secretary-treasurer, respectively. Their
first factory was a single room on the west side of Cayuga Street,
between Green and State Streets. The business expanded so rapidly that a
year later a 2,000 percent increase in facilities was required and the
plant was moved to the three-story "old bank building" on State Street.

[...]

   The Calendar Clock Company in 1874 purchased the old county fair
grounds (at Adams, Auburn, Franklin, and Dey Streets) and erected a
quadrangle of three-story buildings to meet the increasing demands of
its business. The new plant was destroyed by fire two years after its
erection, but it was immediately rebuilt. Thirty-four men were producing
more than six thousand clocks annualy. A New York City sales office was
maintained on Courtland Street. After 1900 new patents held by other
companies greatly decreased the calendar clock business and recently it
ceased.
  In 1877 Henry B. Horton, the inventor of the improved calendar clock,
took out patents on an automatic organ known as the "Autophone." These
patents were sold to a company composed of Francis M. Finch, H. F.
Hibbard and the inventor, who incorporated in 1879 as the Autophone
Company. Their machines were first manufactured in a small section of
the clock factory set aside for that purpose; but by 1881 the entire
western part of the quadrangle was devoted to the manufacture of
autophones. Two years later more people were employed in this work than
in the clock company's section of the plant. A new invention, the roller
organ, made in two styles, the "Gem" and the "Concert," supplanted the
earlier product and a separate three-story building was erected for the
autophone corporation. Toward the end of the last century this company
was producing about fifteen thousand organs and nearly a quarter of a
million music rollers each year. The business gradually declined when
the phonograph came to be widely marketed, and recently the autophone
plant ceased operations entirely.

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