A subsequent lawsuit acknowledged Winkler as the true inventor of the instrument, but Maelzel had by then sold many metronomes.
To this day the device is still known as the Maelzel Metronome and the MM signs often used in music scores to indicate the recommended tempo for a piece unfortunately continue to do injustice to Winkler, the true inventor.

I like to acknowledge Winkler and his once so useful invention (now superseded by electronic devices) in The Pendulum.

Winkler also invented the so called Componium, an instrument which attracted great attention at an exposition in Paris in 1824. A short musical theme could be fed into this machine, which then played an endless series of variations without once repeating itself.

To the great amazement of experts from both the Sciences and the Fine Arts the device could continue to play new variations "...not only during years and ages, but during so immense a series of ages that though figures might be brought to express them, common language could not."

Sounds very much like a fully computerised improviser.