May 27, 2008

New York’s Original Kazoo Co. stays true to nameBy Carolyn ThompsonAP.Google.com

Eden, NY — The name of the place says it all: The Original Kazoo Co. And, boy, do its owners mean original.

The same belt and pulley machines that stamped and shaped the world’s first metal kazoos circa 1900 still stamp and shape kazoos today. The machines are still in the same building, making the same ker-thwunk sound as they perforate, fold and shape.

The finished product hasn’t changed, either. The palm-sized, submarine-shaped musical instrument still makes a tinny vibration when someone hums into it.

If there was ever the temptation to modernize the kazoo-making operation as the business changed hands over the years, it didn’t last.

“It really would kind of spoil the fun of coming here if you couldn’t see things as they were,” Karen Smith said as she scanned the factory floor, now more working museum than manufacturing facility. “It’s wonderful for our country to know that long ago, they invented this way of manufacturing and it still works today.”

The Original Kazoo Co. operates on Main Street in a farm town southwest of Buffalo known as much for its yearly corn festival as kazoos.

The plant opened in 1907 as a sheet metal workshop, producing stove and furnace parts and peanut vending machines. It began making kazoos in 1916 after its owner was approached about creating a metal version of the wooden instrument that had been around since the 1840s.

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