For: Jukebox (disambiguation)

History

Coin-operated music boxes and player pianos carved out a place for automatic pay-per-tune music in fairgrounds, amusement parks and other public places (such as train stations in Switzerland) a few decades before the introduction of reliable coin-operated phonographs. The first jukebox was an automatic phonograph produced in 1927 by Rowe International, then known as AMI. Some of these automatic musical instruments were extremely well built and have survived to this day in the hands of collectors and museums. But commercially they could not compete with the jukebox in the long run since they were limited to the instrument (or instruments) used in their construction, and could not reproduce the human voice.

The immediate ancestor of the jukebox, called the "Coin-slot phonograph", was the first medium of sound recording encountered by the general public, before mass produced home audio equipment became common. Such machines began to be mass produced in 1889, using phonograph cylinders for records. The earliest machines played but a single record (of about 2 minutes of music or entertainment), but soon devices were developed that allowed customers to choose between multiple records. In the 1910s the cylinder gradually was superseded by the gramophone record. The term "juke box" came into use in the United States in the 1930s, derived either from African-American slang "jook" meaning "dance" or from a name given to it by critics who said it would encourage criminal behavior, this came from the fake family name Juke. The shellac 78 rpm record dominated jukeboxes until the Seeburg Corporation introduced an all 45 rpm vinyl record jukebox in 1950.

During the 1960s and '70s, wall box remote selectors were popular in restaurant booths. The most famous is the Seeburg 3W1. Wallboxes didn't have a record mechanism inside; instead they took coins and selected a tune to be played by a jukebox or remote unit elsewhere. The large cabinet was relegated to a back room out of view, and all 160 selections (Rock-Ola and Wurlitzer) or 200 selections (Seeburg) were available in the customer's booth. Small speakers in the wallbox played only your selections, then went quiet while others enjoyed theirs. Since songs were played in the order of the mechanism rather than the order chosen, judicious choice of your songs enabled listening to other patrons selections while awaiting your final song. Multiple purchases of a song simply toggled the selection on - it would only play once, thus satisfying everyone who had paid for it all at the same time. Simply leaving one credit unplayed until late in your meal meant you could hear all songs played until none were left. Some jukeboxes during this time were able to play special 33 1/3 rpm discs that were the same diameter as 45 rpm discs, so a longer song was available, or even multiple songs (an EP, or extended play record) for a higher price. These specialty records, and the familiar white labels used were provided by the unique vendor that supplied records to the operator. Those decades also produced models with ornate lighting, disco and psychedelic effects, and other cosmetic improvements while the reliable internal mechanisms remained moderately stable by comparison. "Popularity" counters told the operator the number of times each record was played (A or B side didn't matter) so popular records remained, while lesser-played songs were replaced with the latest hit song. Wurlitzers were unique because they could play the A side and then the B side of a record then go to the next; Rock-Ola and Seeburg played all the A sides chosen, then all the B sides, then stopped.