In 1877 a man from Stuttgart, Johannes C. Eckardt, applied for an American
patent for a revolving musical tree stand. The user would place the tree´s
trunk in an iron socket case in the shape of a pine cone, and when the
spring mechanism was wound rotate slowly while a small music box concealed
in its circular base played a Chrismas tune. Eckardt, like Albecht,
couldn`t stop tinkering with his idea and he was subsequently granted
three more patents for mechanical improvements to the original design,
which remained popular for forty years.
