By Mary Bellis
One of the early forerunners to the modern Jukebox as we know was the Nickel-in-the-Slot machine. In 1889, Louis Glass and William S. Arnold, placed a coin-operated Edison cylinder phonograph in the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. It was an Edison Class M Electric Phonograph in an oak cabinet that was refitted with a coin mechanism patented (U.S. 428,750) by Glass and Arnold. This was the first Nickel-in-the-Slot. The machine had no amplification and patrons had to listen to the music using one of four listening tubes. In its first six months of service, the Nickel-in-the-Slot earned over $1000.
Factors Affecting the History of the Jukebox*
- During the 1890s, recordings had become popular primarily through coin-in-the-slot phonographs in public places.
- In the decade 1910-20, the phonograph became a truly mass medium for popular music, and recordings of large-scale orchestral works and other classical instrumental music proliferated.
- In the mid-1920s, radio, which provided free music, developed, and this new factor, plus the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, threw the phonograph industry into serious decline.
- During the 1930s, as the American companies relied mainly on dance records in jukeboxes to satisfy a dwindled market, Europe supplied a slow but steady trickle of classical recordings.
The history of Rock-Ola jukeboxes, Seeburg jukeboxes and Wurlitzer jukeboxes.
Questions & Answers
"Manufacturers did not call them "jukeboxes", they called them Automatic Coin-Operated Phonographs (or Automatic Phonographs, or Coin-Operated Phonographs). The term "jukebox" appeared in the 1930's and originated in the southern United States."
This site is the most extensive consolidated source for jukebox information anywhere.