John Joseph Merlin he wheeled about himself, with great facility to any part of the room." At an event held by Teresa Cornelys in Carlisle House, Soho Square, Merlin appeared somewhat disastrously on roller skates of his own invention. By April 1783 Merlin was putting his musical instruments and his automatons on display at his own museum. Advertisements invited readers to visit his Museum of Musical Instruments and Mechanical Inventions at No. 2, Princes Street, Hanover Square, London. Well-off Londoners could meet their friends at Merlin's Mechanical Museum in the afternoon or evening, pay to see the exhibits, and drink tea or coffee
John Joseph Merlin with London jeweller and entrepreneur James Cox. Merlin also created a wide variety of mechanical clocks. One of the most notable was Cox's timepiece, which was powered by changes in atmospheric pressure. Another of Merlin's timepieces is the Merlin Band Clock. Merlin also developed musical instruments. A pianoforte with a six-octave span he made in 1775 preceded by fifteen years Broadwood's five-and-a-half octave grand piano. He made improvements to the harpsichord, and created a barrel-organ/harpsichord which played nineteen tunes. Merlin invented inline skates with two wheels in the 1760s. Thomas Busby's "Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes" (1805) mentions an accident