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 of such efforts, writing of a visit to Cox's Museum in 1772: By 1773 Merlin was also actively designing and making keyboard instruments. He was granted patent (No. 1081) on September 12, 1774, for a pianoforte stop that could be fitted to a harpsichord. Between 1773 and early 1782, instruments were made to his designs at a workshop at 7 Gresse Street, supervised by Louis Lavigne Verel. One of the combined harpsichord-pianofortes that Merlin manufactured may have been owned by Empress Catherine the Great. A harpsichord-piano from 1779 is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and