Jacob Frisard (also spelled Frizard and Fresard)

Born on 5 April 1753 at Villeret in Switzerland, he settled at Bienne. He was a collaborator of Jaquet-Droz and Leschot at Geneva, working along with Maillardet. He also worked in London for a time. Frisard specialised in the making of extremely small and delicate automata incorporating singing birds, but his incomparable skill lay in the making of the sound cams for these pieces. In 1809, he organised an exhibition of his work at Zurich and later went to Constantinople but died in the Danubian provinces on the way home in 1812. (Ord-Hume, Musical Boxes, p. 304)