Jukeboxes

A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that can play specially selected songs from self-contained media. more...

The traditional jukebox is rather large with a rounded top and has colored lighting going up the front of the machine on its vertical sides. The classic jukebox has buttons with letters and numbers on them that, when combined, are used to indicate a specific song from a particular record.

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. 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 In 1929 the cylinder was superseded by the gramophone record. The term "juke box" came into use in the United States in the 1930s, derived from African-American slang "jook" meaning "dance". The shellac 78 rpm record dominated jukeboxes until the Seeburg Corporation introduced an all 45 rpm vinyl record jukebox in 1950.

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