To the casual observer, Leif Engeswick might resemble a shy college professor, but the Ventura man's many interests and works speak volumes for him.

You might say they are music to his ears.

Engeswick's interests include silent films and their restoration, Thomas Alva Edison in general (Engeswick offers a school program in which he demonstrates Edison's phonograph and early motion pictures) and, not least, the restoration of antique mechanical music makers.

The music makers include music boxes, player pianos, barrel and reed organs, and band organs.

Engeswick's passion for mechanical music machines began when he was 5 and his family visited Santa Claus Lane near Carpinteria.

"I saw a coin-operated player piano with eight slots for coins," he recalled.

The machine captivated him. He began to learn all he could about music-making machines.

He attended Balboa Middle School, where his mother worked in the office and his father was a teacher. (His dad would go on to teach at Ventura High School, also Engeswick's alma mater.)

While he was in high school, Engeswick said, his church obtained a new pipe organ. His interest in the project drew him to spend a lot of his free time helping the men from the organ company and asking questions.

The crew was so impressed with him that the company offered him a job when he graduated.

That job put him in contact with other mechanical music makers, from band organs to player pianos.

A neighbor in Ventura had a badly damaged player piano. The outside was restored but the inner workings were, as Engeswick says, "fried." He asked if he might try to restore the piece. The neighbor let him try and he "lucked out," he said.

His interests spread to music boxes but, finding them to be beyond his price range, he started to purchase old and broken ones and restore them.

He expanded his collection to include barrel organs, built originally as sidewalk instruments. He could only afford to buy a piece in such a deplorable state that "no one in their right mind would try to restore it," he said.

He found just such a barrel organ, badly deteriorated and missing pieces. It took years to lovingly put it back together. Once more the instrument plays music.

His collection includes a reed organ that uses paper rolls that may have a link to 19-century Mormon prophet Brigham Young.

His newest project, a band organ that fills one wall of his Ventura living room, is almost complete. The machine is one of only two in the United States that can play a special paper piano roll called a "43-key Bruder."

Developed in Germany, these compositions are considered the best musical arrangements for band organs ever produced. They are deemed superior to similar ones made in America at that time. "They (the 43-key Bruder) use the full range of the instrument," he said.

The band organ is lacking only its decorative case, now under construction. Engeswick hopes to have it finished by Thanksgiving

When the band organ comes to life with its rows of pipes, reeds, drums and triangle, it fills the room with music of another era. Once again the complex musical arrangements, formed on punched paper rolls, bring forth their magic to enthrall and fascinate a new generation.