By Bob Brooke

Bobbysoxers—boys in blue jeans and tight T-shirts with rolled up sleeves with a pack of cigs tucked safely inside and girls in poodle skirts and ponytails—gathered on Saturday nights at local drive-in restaurants and diners for burgers and malts while listening to their favorite new rock n’ roll songs on a device that captured the hearts of a generation of Americans, the jukebox.

A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that plays selections from self-contained media, at first records, then CDs. The classic jukebox has buttons with letters and numbers that patrons to restaurants, diners, and bars pushed in combination to choose and play a specific selection at first for a dime, then later a quarter, fifty cents, and upwards.

Although jukeboxes, in one form or another, had been around since Thomas Edison exhibited one of his phonographs with a coin slot in San Francisco in 1889, the early machines were staid affairs.

Coin-operated music boxes and player pianos were the first forms of automated coin-operated musical devices. These instruments used paper rolls, metal disks, or metal cylinders to play a musical selection on the instrument, or instruments, enclosed within the device. In the 1890s, new machines that used actual recordings instead of physical instruments joined these devices. In 1890, Louis Glass and William S. Arnold invented the nickel-in-the-slot phonograph, the first of which was an Edison Class M Electric Phonograph retrofitted with a device patented under the name of Coin Actuated Attachment for Phonograph. The listener heard the music through one of four listening tubes.

Early designs, upon receiving a coin, unlocked the mechanism, allowing the listener to turn a crank, which simultaneously wound the spring motor and placed the reproducer's stylus in the starting groove. Frequently exhibitors would equip many of these machines with listening tubes (acoustic headphones) and array them in "phonograph parlors" allowing the patron to select between multiple records, each played on its own machine. Some machines even contained carousels and other mechanisms for playing multiple records. Most machines held only one musical selection, the automation coming from the ability to play that one selection at will. In 1918 Hobart C. Niblack patented an apparatus that automatically changed records, leading to one of the first selective jukeboxes being introduced in 1927 by the Automated Musical Instrument Company, later known as AMI.

In 1928, Justus P. Seeburg, who manufactured player pianos, combined an electrostatic loudspeaker with a coin-operated record player and gave the listener a choice of eight records. This Audiophone machine was wide and bulky and had eight separate turntables mounted on a rotating Ferris wheel-like device, allowing patrons to select from eight different records. Later versions of the jukebox included Seeburg's Selectophone, with 10 turntables mounted vertically on a spindle. By maneuvering the tone arm up and down, the customer could select from 10 different records. As increased demand for coin-operated phonographs resulted in the improvement of electrical recording and amplification.

The term "jukebox" came into use in the United States around 1940, apparently derived from the familiar usage "juke joint," derived from the word "juke" meaning disorderly, rowdy, or wicked.

Song-popularity counters informed the jukebox owner how many times each record had been played. They didn’t distinguish from the A and B sides. As a result, popular records remained while lesser-played songs were replaced.

Wallboxes were an important, and profitable, part of any jukebox installation. Serving as a remote control, they enabled patrons to select tunes from their table or booth. One example is the Seeburg 3W1, introduced in 1949 as companion to the 100-selection Model M100A jukebox. Stereo sound became popular in the early 1960s, and wallboxes of the era had built-in speakers to provide patrons with the best in sound.

Initially jukeboxes played music recorded on wax cylinders. Then in the early part of the 20^th century jukeboxes switched to the shellac 78 rpm record. The Seeburg Corporation introduced an all 45 rpm vinyl precord jukebox in 1950 leading to the 45 rpm record becoming the dominant jukebox media for the last half of the 20th century. By the last decades of the century, jukebox manufacturers used 331/3 and., 45 R.P.M. records and CD’s in their machines.

Jukeboxes once received the newest songs first. They played music on demand without commercials. They offered a means to control the music listened to beyond what was available through the technology of their heyday.

Jukeboxes were most popular from the 1940s through the mid-1960s, but especially during the 1950s. By the middle of the 1940s, three-quarters of the records produced in America went into jukeboxes. While often associated with early rock and roll music, their popularity extends back much further, including classical music, opera and the swing music era.

Jukebox styling progressed from the plain wooden boxes in the early 1930s to beautiful light shows with marbelized plastic and color animation in the Wurlitzer 850 Peacock of 1941. The 1942 Wurlitzer 950 featured wooden coin chutes to save on metal. The machines of the era beginning in 1937 were made of gaudy plastic, frosted glass, jeweled mirrors, and chrome ornaments. Many of those Art Deco creations were self-contained light shows with polarized revolving disks, bubble tubes, and flashing pilasters.

But after the United States entered the war, the U.S. Government needed metal and plastic for the war effort. Since the U.S. Government deemed jukeboxes "nonessential," manufacturers such as Wurlitzer, Seeburg, Rock-Ola, and Crosley stopped producing them until 1946.

During those golden years from 1937 to 1949, Wurlitzer's Paul Fuller, considered by many to be the Leonardo da Vinci of jukebox design, created 13 full-size machines, five table models, and numerous speakers. His Model 1015, referred to as the "1015 bubbler," and considered a pop culture icon, offered 24 selections. More than 56,000 sold in less than two years.

The Golden Age of jukebox design ended when Fuller suffered a heart attack in 1944 and died the next year. By then a new generation of larger jukeboxes had appeared, and distributors relegated the classic machines from the golden years to the junk heap.

Today, with the advent of music-on-demand played through MP3 players, tablets, and smartphones, there’s no incentive to pay a jukebox to play music. While jukeboxes remain in some bars, they have all but disappeared from their more lucrative locations—restaurants, diners, military barracks, video arcades, and laundromats.

But even with all of today’s high-tech music devices, the sound from one of those old machines was fabulous. Nothing beats hearing an old 78 on a machine created just to play it. Those were the days.

Photo Captions from top to bottom:

• The AMI Model A was the first jukebox with colored fluorescent lights.
• Patrons using the Rock-Ola Spectravox dialed their selections, and music came out the top, under the bowl.
• The Seeburg Envoy was a hefty machine with a beautiful Art Deco exterior.
• The Wurlitzer Model 42 was a "victory" model with no plastic because of World War II.
• Early illuminated jukeboxes like the Wurlitzer Model 750 far surpassed anything produced before or since.
• The 1941 Wurlitzer Model 850 was the only one ever to use Polaroid film to create changing colors.

As an avid collector of a variety of antiques and collectibles for the last 20 years, Bob Brooke knows what he’s writing about. Besides writing about antiques, Brooke has also sold at flea markets and worked in an antique shop, so he knows the business side too. His articles have appeared in many antiques and consumer publications, including British Heritage, Antique Week, Southeastern Antiquing and Collecting Magazine, www.OldandSold.com, and many others. To read more of his work, visit his main website at http://www.bobbrooke.com or his specialty antiques site at http:// www.theantiquesalmanac.com