Jukebox History 1934-1951
During
the late thirties the public atmosphere in
In
the early thirties, however, the modern automatic phonograph was not yet
considered a housetrained piece of machinery, and today it might be right with
a popular expression to call the following period the hobbledehoy stage of the
jukebox. Today we know it more correctly as the Golden Age. The latter
half of the thirties was definitely a period with circumstances important for
the development of the jukebox towards the hey-days of design in the years
1941/42. Circumstances like the difficult economic situation, the war that
might come, the invention of new techniques, and certainly the public yearning
for musical entertainment. All considered one cannot expect that a similar
breathtaking era will ever be possible in the future history of the jukebox
concept.
The
period prior to the Golden Age gave birth indeed to a growing demand for
music machines, and in the years 1934-36 there was a perceptible competition
among the relatively few manufacturers to operate automatic phonographs in
diners, saloons, and other small locations of entertainment. The production of
jukeboxes in large numbers was no longer tantamount to a safe increase in
earnings. An effective marketing with a steady release of new models became
more and more important for the survival of the manufacturing companies, and
the production year gradually became of great importance, when the owner of a
saloon or diner should be talked into accepting a new piece of furniture.
Even
though the manufacturers had consulted industrial designers during the
development of new models for years it was not until 1938, when the J. P. Seeburg Corporation intensely started to put catalin-plastics into the wooden cabinets, it was
understood how important the designers were for the expected success of the
jukebox business. The first design patents of the golden era covering jukebox
cabinets were filed in 1934 by Theodore E. Samuelson.
The two design patents were both assigned to The John Gabel Manufacturing
Company of
The
year after Charles Nairn Deverall assigned the design
patent for the Wurlitzer P-12 with illuminated dial to the manufacturer,
the noted designer Paul M. Fuller was employed by The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company
as a kind of design consultant. Paul M. Fuller is today considered to be the
most important designer in the history of jukeboxes, and it seems that the
combination of the two energetic, cigar-smoking gentlemen of the same age (both
born in 1897), sales manager
Homer Earl Capehart
and designer Paul M. Fuller, kept
the Wurlitzer company alive as a producer of coin-op pre-recorded music
machines after the coin-operated organ and piano business died out as one of
the consequences of the Depression 1929-1934. The employment of Paul M. Fuller
in fact gave the company a leading position on the market during the early
years of the forties, the hey-days, and one might state for sure that the team
led by Paul M. Fuller made a line of jukeboxes superior to those of the
competitors.
The
automatic phonographs had suddenly become a real financial success for several
companies like The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, the J. P. Seeburg
Corporation, the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation (David C. Rockola delivered one of the new 12-selection phonographs
to the decks of the luxury liner Queen Mary on her maiden voyage from New York
in 1936), and the Automatic Musical Instrument Company, also called AMI. The big
four mentioned here were of course not the only ones to produce classic
designs. A relatively large number of design patents is
today proof of the presence of many hard-working industrial designers.
As
mentioned previously the J. P. Seeburg Corporation
used catalin-plastics in the music machines around
1938. Two industrial designers were connected to the company, and they worked
hard to create successful designs. One of them, Henry T. Roberts,
also designed radios, and the other, Nels A. Miller, became a
noted designer after the war with the rather special Trash Can models.
The official names were of course Seeburg Symphonola P-146, P-147, and P-148. Using
the word catalin, 'the gem of plastics',
it is important to mention that the product name was a registered trademark of
the Catalin Corporation in
In
connection with the designer names it is interesting also to observe that David C. Rockola,
the president of the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation, assigned all design
patents to the company. No other top manager in the early forties was a
designer, as far as the editor knows. One of the other important industrial
designers was the engineer Lloyd J. Andres, who
worked near the top of AMI together with engineer Clifford Henry
Green. The two engineers had been authorized by the
management to develop a new line of improved coin-op phonographs after the
depression. Lloyd J. Andres has not previously been mentioned, as he deserves,
in the literature about jukebox history. His first patented full size jukebox
design of 1937 got the official name AMI Top Flight, but he had prior to
that designed the casing for a special remote control selector in 1936. Later
he also designed most of the interesting AMI Singing Tower models in the
early forties. However, it ought to be mentioned that Henry T. Roberts,
who normally worked for the J. P. Seeburg
Corporation, as a free lancer assigned a remarkable Singing Tower design
patent to the Automatic Musical Instrument Company (Lloyd J. Andres) in 1941.
The talents of industrial designers became an important asset of the big
jukebox manufacturers in Chicago, Grand Rapids, and North Tonawanda.
The
J. P. Seeburg Corporation seriously introduced
transparent plastics in the cabinets in 1938, as mentioned before, and also
other new design effects like for example the use of nickel-plated castings had
a certain influence on the marketing possibilities. The nickel-plated parts of
the models from The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, especially of the models Wurlitzer
500, 600 and the counter-top model 61, and the introduction
of colour cylinders in model 500, made the Wurlitzer jukeboxes very popular.
Now it was not only a matter of an illuminated jukebox, but the idea of
changing colours had come to stay. The other big manufacturing companies had to
find new ways in order to compete, and as an example the Rock-Ola Manufacturing
Corporation used big areas of catalin-plastics in the
models Rock-Ola Standard 20 and Deluxe 20 of 1939, and the year
after in all models Rock-Ola Master 20 and Super 20 Luxury Lightup. Another competitor, the Mills Novelty Company
of Chicago, produced the nice Laurence B. Burnham
styled Throne of Music and Everett B. Eckland
styled Empress full-size jukeboxes in 1939-1941 with big cabinet areas
of transparent plastics (different colour combinations were available).
According to the manager Arthur V. Cooley,
Everett Byron Eckland also designed the previous Do-Re-Mi,
Swing King, Studio, and Zephyr models of 1936-1938,
but unfortunately none of the designs were filed for patent. The special Art
Deco design of the Empress model makes it in great demand among
collectors today, and talking about Art Deco design of those years one cannot
forget the AMI Streamliner designed by Lloyd J. Andres and produced by
the Automatic Musical Instruments Company. Lloyd J. Andres had several Streamliner
designs patented, but they were never manufactured. These designs were together
with several other remarkable Singing
Tower designs published for the first time in the editor's publication of
1994 entitled "Golden Age Juke-Box Design 1934-1951".
The
special version of jukeboxes to be used in small locations, often called
counter-top or miniature jukeboxes, was a well-known type around 1938/39, and
the leading manufacturer, The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, marketed until 1941/42
the nice models Wurlitzer 41, 51, 61, 71, and 81.
The Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation had to compete with them only the model Rock-Ola
CM-39 of 1939 and later in 1941 the model Rock-Ola 1409, also called
JR-12. There were a few others of the same type on the market, but as a phenomenon they had no chance to
compete with the hide-away units connected to remote controls, which were
introduced for real in 1939 by the Automatic Musical Instruments Company in the
form of Mighty Midget units, and in the form of Wall-O-Matic and Bar-O-Matic
remote controls produced by the J. P. Seeburg
Corporation. The small counter-top jukeboxes could not survive the hey-days of
design and the competition during the years 1940-42, but the hide-away units
did survive because they could be used in very small locations in the big
cities. The impressive AMI Singing Tower models also survived during the
war, operated by an affiliation of AMI, Singing Towers Inc. in
In
the year 1940 the hey-days of design really started with the full-size models Wurlitzer
700 and 800, and the counter-top model Wurlitzer 41 made by
the company in
At
the J. P. Seeburg Corporation, the designers choose
not to use extreme visual effects, but some unique automatic phonographs were
manufactured in 1940. The Square Top series, namely Seeburg
Cadet, Commander, and Concert Master (nicknamed Faces)
with matching Seeburg Top Spot speaker
unit, was indeed something special, but unfortunately that series with Rainbo-Glo illumination was not design patented.
However, it is possible that Nels A. Miller was
responsible for the Square Top series. The year before Henry T. Roberts
designed and patented nearly all models with Marbl-Glo
illumination for the company, but there are so distinct differences in details,
that it seems correct to assume that Nels A. Miller
designed the model line of 1940. Henry T. Roberts also design patented the
following Hitone Symphonola
series of 1941/42 equipped with the new sliding-tray mechanism invented and
filed for patent in August 1937 by Carl G. Freborg
and his father, piano maker Charles A. Freborg.
The sales department at Seeburg dubbed this model
their Minute Man model to promote the sale of defence bonds. After the
Hitone series the production was stopped for
a short period until after the war, when the new and interesting Trash Can
models were design patented by Nels Allen Miller, as
mentioned before.
The
model line of the years 1941/42 from the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation
shows some of the most remarkable cabinets of the Golden Age, the ToneColumn series, which in fact represented big
combined remote control and speaker units. The today well-known representative
of the series was Rock-Ola Spectravox 1801/1802
with a dial instead of push buttons. All ToneColumn
models with selector unit could be used in connection with the newly introduced
Playmaster hide-away mechanism. During the war
year 1942 before the factory production stopped the models Rock-Ola Commando,
Premier 1413 and President 1414 with top speaker unit made by the
American Jensen company, were made in limited numbers. They were a natural
continuation of the ToneColumn principle, but
they now had a complete mechanism and amplifier in the lower part of the
cabinet. The Rock-Ola Commando was the basic model built in two
variations, the common one using glass panels and the other using catalin-plastics, and the Premier 1413 and President
1414 were only made in very limited numbers. Caused by war restrictions the
limited series had glass pilastres, and maybe due to
the size and the fact that they did not look like ordinary jukeboxes with push
buttons they were never considered a real success among operators.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note from the indication of the design
patents, sound reproducing apparatus, that they were not meant for
built-in mechanisms in the first place. The following production obviously went
in another direction, and it is also confusing that David C. Rockola a few years later used the same indication sound
reproducing apparatus for two design patents for the Rock-Ola 1420
series.
In
1941 there were at least five totally unknown design patents by David C. Rockola for ToneColumn
auxiliary speakers without selector units, but they were most probably never
produced. The Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation had after that, like the other
big companies in the business, a period of three or four years where no new
models were produced.
Considering
the line of jukeboxes from The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company made during the years
before the war stop between 1943 and 1945 one can easily get the impression
that nothing could stop the Paul M. Fuller team from making nice play appealing
models. The team was in fact way ahead of the other designer teams in the
business, and it is surprising that Paul M. Fuller never design patented the
Victory line models: the Wurlitzer 750, the Wurlitzer 780 also
called Wagon Wheel, the Wurlitzer 850 generally known as the Peacock,
and finally the Wurlitzer 950 of 1942 often referred to as Pipes of
Pan, which was the last in direct series. The company celebrated the
National Wurlitzer Days, the 5th and 6th January, 1941, by introducing the
Victory line of three console and two counter-top
models (750, 780, 850, 41, and 81).
However, the war took longer than expected and the model 950 was not
referred to as part of the Victory line. It is interesting that the previous
models Wurlitzer 700 and 800 of 1940 were not design patented,
and also that the same can be said about the successive model in colonial style
officially named Victory by the company. It may therefore be reasonable
to assume that the models made in those few years in the early forties at The
Rudolph Wurlitzer Company were designed by the team at the factory and not by
one particular person (Paul M. Fuller did not want to take all the credit),
although it was stated by general sales manager Milton G. Hammergren
in the "Coin Machine Review" in January, 1941, that the Victory line was
designed by Paul M. Fuller, and that the Victory Models were the most beautiful
phonographs ever to bear the Wurlitzer nameplate.
A
new detail in the design of the Wurlitzer 850 was that it had
illuminated push buttons that turned dark when selection had been made. The
feature in question was not quite easy to combine with another operational
detail, namely the electric selection mechanism. In the earlier years of
mechanical selection the customers could see which records had been selected,
and therefore they avoided selecting the same record again. With the new
electric selection mechanism the same record could be selected several times,
but normally only played once. In short, the new electric selector gave the
operator(s) an opportunity to earn more due to the motto that the customer
would be satisfied if only he heard the tune he had paid for. The Wurlitzer
750 was the first jukebox from the company with an electric selection
mechanism. The last model in the series, the Wurlitzer 950 of 1942, was
originally produced with glass pilastres and not as
the previous models with catalin-plastics, and the
use of many wooden parts in the cabinet combined with a very limited production
number makes it very popular among collectors today.
As
mentioned before there was a production stop among jukebox manufacturers in the
years from 1943 until 1945/46 mainly due to lack of metal and other material,
and a few of the factories built military equipment instead of music machines.
Another reason was of course that jukeboxes were 'non-important' products
officially during the armament, and thus it was necessary to wait until autumn
1945 before new design patents could see the light of day. However, one
company of the era that deserves to be mentioned, although it was short lived
from 1938 until 1942, is the Cinematone Corp. at 1107
North Highland Avenue in Hollywood headed by dentist and inventor Gordon Keith Woodard
(1911-1986). The coin-op film projectors made and operated by the company were
not successful, but another venture of the company, that ought to be remembered
today, is the very rare and much desired Penny
Phono
jukebox developed by William Peter Falkenberg
(1889-1973), amusement park owner from Tulsa, Oklahoma. William P. Falkenberg invented and patented several rifle range gaming
devices late in the 1930s for Rayolite based in
Chicago, and he was president of the Rayolite
Distributing Co.. The unusual, compact Penny Phono
machine used special 12-inch 20-song transcription records that played at an
ever-increasing speed starting at 20rpm and ending at about 60rpm, and the
jukebox was introduced to the public in September, 1939. From April 1940 the
company was headed by Erle Miles Burnham (1879-1943),
and the manager of the motion picture factory, the former Associated Cinema
Studios, was Fred J. Alberti. Gordon K. Woodard and William P. Falkenberg
withdrew from active participation and became stockholders. The
Cinematone Corp. had of course its own recording
studio at 1357 Gordon Street to produce the special records, as the Penny Phono
could not play regular 78rpm records, and a very special person was head of the
Cinematone Music Department in the years around 1940,
namely the talented drummer Lindley Armstrong Jones
(1911-1965) better known today by the name Spike Jones. The cabinets for Penny Phono phonographs were made at Erle
M. Burnhamˈs furniture factory at 1935 South Los
Angeles Street, the facilities of the former Burnham Phonograph Manufacturing Co..
After
the war, towards the end of the golden era, all four big companies and a few
others introduced new cabinet types for automatic phonographs, and Paul M.
Fuller again had several cabinet designs patented and assigned to The Rudolph
Wurlitzer Company, which was still the leading firm in the business. The
post-war models were produced in large numbers followed by very effective
marketing, and the models in mind were of course the famous Wurlitzer 1015,
the following model 1080 and finally the Wurlitzer 1100 with a
well designed Encore program selector. The last of the three models
was nicknamed Bullet or Bomber Nose by the public, and all
three models were design patented by Paul M. Fuller in the period 1946 until
1948. With direct reference to the Wurlitzer 1015 design there was a
special cabinet named Ambassador to be produced in 1948 by a small firm
in
In
the period 1946 until 1948 the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation produced
three cabinet types: the Rock-Ola 1422, the 1426, and finally the
1428 also named Magic-Glo, and there
are in fact three design patents related to that series, all officially made by
David C. Rockola. Two of them can be related directly
to the models Rock-Ola 1422 and 1428, but the last of the three
relates to details on both the 1422 and the
In
Grand Rapids a new AMI Model B was introduced in 1948 by the Automatic
Musical Instruments Company to follow the Mother of Plastic designed by Jean Otis Reinecke
(1909-1987). The next model, the AMI Model C was made in 1949, and it is
normally not considered to belong to the Golden Age of American
jukeboxes. Both models were not design patented. The name of the company was
officially changed to AMI Inc. in 1946, and it was finally sold to Automatic
Canteen Company of America in the spring of 1959 (the first president was
Clarence W. Clark of Chicago, Illinois). The Automatic Canteen Company of
The
last of the four big companies, the J. P. Seeburg
Corporation, produced as mentioned earlier three Trash Can models
designed by Nels A. Miller in the period 1946 until
1948. Nels A. Miller and the all aluminum
Symphonola P- boxes led the company to
the end of the Golden Age. The era ended in fact with the well-known Mahlon W. Kenney styled Seeburg M-100-A with Select-O-Matic vertical play mechanism invented by Edward F. Andrews
around 1941. The new model was introduced in 1948/49 as the first jukebox with
100 selections in 78rpm, but many of the M-100-A's were in fact
converted to play 45rpm records in the years to come. In connection with the
use of 78rpm vs. 45rpm format in jukeboxes it is rather interesting to note the
comments sent to the editor by Morgan Wright, who wrote the following facts:
"...Black people preferred the 78rpm format
until the late 50's even in their jukeboxes, because they were living in
poverty, and when the 78rpm jukeboxes in white neighborhoods
were being replaced by 45rpm jukeboxes, the operators (all of whom were white)
had to use the old 78rpm jukeboxes for something. They couldn't just throw them
away, so they stuck them in black neighborhoods and
also hillbilly juke-joints, while the people with money used the 45rpm
jukeboxes. One will notice that many R&B and C&W records were still
being pressed in 78rpm until as late as 1957-58, but it's very rare to find
78rpm recordings of popular white 'pop' music later than 1952-53...". Those are, whether we like it or not, true and
interesting historic comments.
At this point, it is reasonable to mention that the
first mechanism for vertical double-sided play of 78rpm records for coin-op
phonographs was constructed and patented in June 1935 by Henri Paul Louis Couly (1905-1979) in France. The mechanism was introduced
to the public in October 1936 at Le Salon des Inventions (Concours
Lépine) in Paris, and Henri Couly
received a Diplôme de Grand Prix for his invention.
The complete patent for the mechanism was, however, filed in June 1948, and Henri
Couly also filed a new patent in May 1953 for
vertical double-sided play of 45rpm records to be used in coin-op phonographs
made in his own workshop. The Couly
family grave can be found at the Cimetière Ville
Haute in the village Provins in France.
A
rather special phenomenon in the history of jukeboxes was remote control via
telephone lines, or more correctly music ordering via phone. The idea of big
central music libraries was not something new as there had been such libraries
in the early years of the 20th century, but they had not been connected to
restaurants, saloons, or diners. In the forties several music ordering systems
were used around in America, for example the Rock-Ola Mystic Music, the Jennings
Telephone Music first known as Magic Music in Columbus, Ohio, the Scotto
Melody Master mainly used in Sacramento, California, and not to forget the Shyvers' Multiphone
system designed, introduced, and operated for more than a decade by Kenneth C. Shyvers, and his wife Eloise, in the cities Olympia,
Seattle, and Tacoma, in Washington.
Another
line in the jukebox history led to the big audio/visual machines, which mainly
the Mills Novelty Company of
Towards the end of this short American design history some manufacturer
and designer names, that had a certain importance, ought to be mentioned. At
the end of the war a company that originally made radar equipment and
electronics went into the jukebox business. The first jukebox series from the Aireon Manufacturing Corporation founded by William J. Hosmer
and Randolph C. Walker
was designed and patented in 1946 by Canadian born Ernest F. Thomson
(1914-1997). The box was officially named Aireon
Super De Luxe, but also nicknamed Airliner
because of the size. From the very
first day the new player in the coin-op phonograph field caused a lot of
buzz-buzz in the industry, and the Canadian born vice-president Rudolph (Rudy) Greenbaum
(1912-1994) was in charge of the phonograph division from the autumn 1945 until
May 1948. Rudy Greenbaum was from 1939 until 1942
sales manager of the Packard manufacturing Corp. in Indianapolis, and then
until 1945 he served with the WMC in Kansas City. However, the first serious
production of Aireon jukeboxes was a little delayed
and started in May 1946, and after six months the phonograph division and plant
manager Joseph Bush
(1892-1950) could celebrate machine #10,000 leaving the assembly line on the
30th November 1946. The following Aireon
Fiesta series was also design patented by Ernest F. Thomson, and the
auxiliary speakers, the Impressario,
the Melodeon, and the Carilleon, were
all designed by Jay B. Doblin (1920-1989),
who was associated with the Raymond Loewy Studio in New York for twelve years.
All patents were assigned to the independent federal agency Reconstruction
Finance Corporation, which had become responsible for the production of Aireon commercial phonographs due to financial
difficulties in the Aireon Manufacturing Corporation
founded in 1937. The following phonograph model of 1948 officially named Aireon Coronet, nicknamed Canned Ham by the public, was
unfortunately not design patented, but it is possible that the design of the
cabinet was part of a complete functional patent not yet located in the
archives. The last new model was introduced at the coin machine show in January
1949, and the Aireon Manufacturing Corp. was finally
liquidated by the RFC in January 1950. It is important to mention that the Aireon company was a merger in 1939 between a company
founded 1932 by Thomas Lee Siebenthaler
in Kansas City, Missouri, and the company founded in 1937 by William J. Hosmer and Randolph C. Walker in Burbank, California.
Another production shortly after the war was the Packard line
made by the Packard Manufacturing Company (founded in 1932 and named after
Packard Avenue in Fort Wayne). Another company, also founded by Homer Earl Capehart (1928), had been active with several Orchestrope models for years before the war, but the
new company was not active until the mid forties. Homer Earl Capehart was also for years in the thirties (mid 1933
through 1939) connected to The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company as general sales
manager. After the war, when Homer Earl Capehart had
become senator of Indiana (served in the Senate 1945-1963), the Packard company
was revived and headed by the founder's son, Thomas C. Capehart,
and the jukebox series Packard 7 Pla-Mor
(pronounced play more) and Packard Manhattan with matching
speakers was produced until the spring of 1949. The Packard 7 Pla-Mor was design patented by Robert L. Ardner,
and the Packard Manhattan introduced in January, 1948, was design
patented by Russell E. Brandenburger Sr.. Edward E. Collison,
who constructed most of the mechanical parts for Packard jukeboxes
together with Paul U. Lannerd,
assigned several nicely designed speakers and remote controls to Homer Earl Capehart as early as 1941, and among them was also the Packard
Butler remote control unit. The design of the Butler was in fact
part of a complete functional patent. The Packard Manufacturing Company was finally taken
over by The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company early in September, 1951. It is sad to
remember today that the last head of Packard Manufacturing Co., Thomas Charles Capehart and
his wife Nancy Elizabeth both died in a Jamaican plane crash on Thomasˈ
birthday, the 21st January, 1960.
Concerning the Capehart Butler remote controls of 1941 it is important also to mention the
Buckley version. The Buckley Music System Inc. at 4223 West Lake Street was
established in 1939 as an affiliation of the Buckley Manufacturing Co. at 2156
West Washington Boulevard, Chicago, founded in 1929 by Patrick J.
Buckley supported by his older brother Hubert G. Buckley.
The Buckley Manufacturing Co. was active on the market until late in the 1950s,
when federal laws to regulate interstate shipment of slot machines were
implemented by company raids, and among others also Buckley had to stop
production of mechanical coin operated gambling machines. More than sixty
different slot machines and pin tables were made with the Buckley name plate
between 1929 and 1958. The Buckley Music System Inc. was active as a separate
affiliation from the autumn 1939 and used mainly mechanics and record changers
from other major manufacturers in the field. However, the remote selector units
and speakers were developed, designed, and patented by the skilled engineer Earle G. Henry, and
at least fourteen patents related to the music system are known. The main
units, which were steel cabinets containing Twin-12 or Twin-24 Simplex record changers from WurliTzer or Daily Double-Track
changers, were sold as hideaways with a set of Buckley Music Box remote controls, nicknamed Buck, and usually one mighty lite-up Zephyr wall speaker. Smaller wall
speakers were of course available, and the lite-up Buck selector units could over the years
be delivered in chrome, gold or different colours
with or without red or yellow side plastics. It is known that a ceiling speaker
was made, but size and colour is unfortunately not
known.
The Filben
FP-300 Maestro was another jukebox of the post-war golden era, which today
is reckoned to be something special by enthusiasts. The first models with the
official name Filben (mechanism based on the
original patent filed on the 15th July, 1937, by William Michael Filben) were made according to a license contract of
September 1938 with the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation, but unfortunately
William Michael Filben
died on the 1st May, 1940, without any company name officially registered. The
rights under the license contract, however, were then vested in his widow, Berniece M. Filben, and in three
minor daughters (Patricia, Rosemary, and Dolores). Later the widow assigned all
rights to the newly constructed Filben Manufacturing
Co. against 51% of the shares, and the production of automatic phonographs was
carried out by the co-owner of the company, Leonard Egan Baskfield
(49% of the shares). The actual production of the mechanisms and cabinets took
place at Batavia Metal Products Inc. according to a contract stating that an
initial amount of 10,000 such phonographs should be produced. The contract also
provided for re-designing of the cabinet at the expense of Batavia Metal
Products Inc., and the distribution of all Filben
phonographs, including the Mirrocle
Music line with stow-a-way unit FM-S2, was carried out by the
U.S. Challenge Co. in
One
of the last important jukebox productions of the Golden Age took place
at the Mills Novelty Company, also known as Mills Industries Inc. after the
company name was officially changed on the 16th July, 1943. The firm is
mentioned previously, also in connection with audio/visual machines, but after
the war the production of ordinary jukeboxes went on with the Mills
Constellation models. The mechanism used in the last series of Mills
phonographs was developed by the team headed by the technical director John P. (Midge) Ryan, and the cabinet
for the Constellation was designed by the noted industrial designer Walter Lockwood Martling
Jr., who was also responsible for some remarkable drafts for Mills
speakers and remote controls in 1946/47. Finally, after the phonograph division
of Mills Industries Inc. had been taken over by the H. C. Evans Company, the Constellation
model was produced in two versions, models 950 and 951, of which
the model 951 had a fully visible mechanism. The H. C. Evans Co. was
like the Mills firm an old family owned firm founded in 1892 by Edwin C. (Ed) Hood, and after his death managed
for decades by his son Richard W. (Dick) Hood. The firm was liquidated in
April 1955.
It
is still possible to locate new jukebox related patents, but all the known
American design patents of the Golden Age were published for the first
time in the editor's publication entitled "Golden Age Juke-Box Design
1934-1951". The
publication was printed in 1994 (limited edition).
Gert J. Almind