Julius Wellner, 1869-1917
Selective Coin-Op
Phonograph Pioneer
Julius Wellner was born on the 25th April 1869* in the village Pápa in the Veszprém province of the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy, and his father was tailor Peter Wellner, and his mother was a womanˈs physician Katherine Wellner, born Swartz.
There were thirteen children in the marriage, but only four survived a cholera
epidemic, the oldest Rosa and Joseph, and the youngest Julius and Alexander.
Julius Wellner started at the age of twelve in 1881 as an apprentice to learn
watchmaking, and around 1885 he left the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to find work
as a clock repairman first in Germany, and the following years in London,
England, and he claimed that he took part in the service of the Great Clock of
Westminster (Big Ben) while he was
there. Then he went by boat to India to service and repair the clocks at
official and military buildings and returned via Germany to London around 1889.
He was ill with typhoid fever and hospitalized, and at the Middlesex Hospital
he met the nurse Ellen (Nellie)
Collyer (1866-1899), his future wife. Julius Wellner and his wife to be went to
America and arrived in New York on the 15th June 1894.
Still not officially married, they settled at 196 Bower Street in Jersey City
Heights. The daughter Katherine Martha (Kitty)
was born on the 15th February 1895, and Julius Wellner
and Nellie Collyer were formally married on the 6th
January 1895, and they soon moved to 507 Hilton Avenue, Jersey City Heights.
Julius Wellner was naturalized as American citizen on the 4th
January 1898.
After a short period as foreman at a machine
workshop Julius Wellner established a small local facility manufacturing metal
tune sheets, and he had ten to fifteen girls working the presses. This became
the basis of the Perfection Music-Box Co., first located in 1897 at Columbia
Avenue in Hoboken, but soon the factory moved to 17-19 Mulberry Street in
Newark. In 1901 Julius Wellner had 32 employees at the factory, and the
manufactured musical boxes were usually marked with number 6-29-1897 plus
serial number. The first digits are the date his first patent 585,246 for ˈfelt
dampersˈ was granted in the US, and the patented felt dampers were an
important feature of the ˈPerfectionˈ musical boxes. Nellie Collyer
Wellner was the company bookkeeper, but unfortunately, she died in August 1899,
due to complications after an operation, blood poisoning, and Julius soon after
moved from the latest address, 800 Broad Street in Newark, to Philadelphia, and
opened a music store at 922 Walnut Street. Julius Wellner was still the
principal of Perfection Music-Box Co., and in 1900-1901 he had three patents
assigned to him and the Perfection Music-Box Co. by German born Josef Natterer
(1862-), and the brothers Charles Condit Clifford (1866-1940) and Alfred Clark
Clifford (1881-1941). In 1902 Julius Wellner had an additional patent assigned
to him by Edward D. Gleason (1860-1940), and early in 1904 he rented factory
facilities on 7th and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia, and started to work with
two friends, German born cabinet maker Asmus August Philippsen
(1873-1955) and Irish born mechanical engineer James A. Brennan (1864-1914),
to develop an automatic device to change records on phonographs. This was based
on patent 766,561 filed on the 14th August 1903, which
included an automatic needle changer.
On the 22nd December, 1901, Julius Wellner
married Maude Marie May (1869-1939), a
former stenographer at the Pennsylvania Railroad, and they lived at a few
addresses in Philadelphia. In August 1908, Julius Wellner boarded the SS
Blücher of the Hamburg-American Line for Europe to visit his mother and
relatives in Hungary. He was as mentioned above naturalized as
American citizen in 1898, but he could not have visited them earlier as he
could still have been drafted in the Hungarian Army until 39 years of age. On
the 21st October 1909, the son Charles Julius Wellner
was born.
On the 25th June 1910, the Auto Piano Company at 428 Market Street,
Camden, was incorporated in Philadelphia by Julius Wellner, Frank James Curran
(1872-1948), J. W. Hightown (1880-), and Thomas James Curley (1860-1918), but
Julius Wellner had by then for several years due to possible patent
infringements a good contact to the well reputed John Gabel
(1872-1955) of the Automatic
Machine and Tool Co. in Chicago. It seems, since both Gabel and Wellner
came from the same region in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and spoke the same
German dialect, that they became friends personally and in business. When Gabel and Wellner met at a trade
show to discuss patent infringements, Gabel immediately liked Wellner; - they
were of like minds and souls, and Julius Wellner had some problems with
the needle changer in his selective phonograph in the workshop. Therefore, no
need to spend money on patent infringement cases, and as a result Julius
Wellner became the most successful East Coast agent operating and selling John Gabelˈs "Automatic Entertainer" introduced
in 1906. After Wellnerˈs early death most of John Gabelˈs impressive Automatic
Entertainer selective phonographs were distributed nationwide by a section
of The Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. headed by Howard Eugene Wurlitzer (1871-1928).
Also Wellner was a successful agent for the J. P. Seeburg Co. in Chicago, and
became a personal friend of the founder Justus P. Seeburg
(born Justinus Perciwall
Sjöberg) (1871-1958). The most successful orchestrion for moving
picture parlors was the Seeburg Motion Picture Player trademarked as the Pipe
Organ Orchestra, and the J. P. Seeburg Co. sold via agents like Wellner about
1,000 of the ˈphotoplayersˈ in the years
from late 1913 until 1919. Julius Wellner was also the sole representative in
Philadelphia of The Regina Co. of Rahway, New Jersey, a subsidiary of the
Polyphon-Musikwerke AG in Leipzig, Germany, and
manufacturer of the popular six-selection coin-operated Hexaphone
(Models 101-104) phonograph
introduced in December 1908. From 1904/05 until around 1911 Julius Wellner also
marketed the talking machines and records imported from the Homophon
Co. G.m.b.H. in Berlin, a company founded by Herrmann
Eisner (1860-1927)
born in Brieg in Silesia (Brzeg in Poland today).
The Homophon record label changed in 1911 after
patent infringements to Homokord, but the company
name remained the same. The German company name Homophon
in Berlin not to be confused with the Australian phonograph brand ˈHomophoneˈ
used by Home Recreations Ltd. in Sydney.
The only real personal problem Julius Wellner
had in his business life came in 1913. On the 13th
June he was indicted for possible violations of The Mann Act of 1910 but
acquitted by the U.S. District Court in March 1914. At the time he was a well-known
millionaire due to years of successful music box business and property
investments, and known as a kind, fair, and righteous man, but he could not
avoid having his name and the indictment mentioned in the newspapers. However,
in 1914/15 it was all forgotten, and after renting the ground floor since 1912
Julius Wellner purchased the Racquet Club Building at 923 Walnut Street in
Philadelphia and remodeled the whole building to be his modern business
showroom, known as The Wellner Building. The address at Walnut Street is a car
park facility today.
In June 1917, after years of experiments and
hard work by Julius Wellner, Asmus August Philippsen, and the late James Andrew
Brennan, it could finally be announced that the "Wellner Marvel", a
new 24 selection, push-button phonograph was ready for the market and attracted
considerable attention in the showroom. This could be read on page 46 in the
magazine Talking Machine World, No. 7, published on the 15th
July 1917. The Wellner Marvel, or World Marvel as Julius would have preferred,
was a machine in which twenty-four different records could be placed in
position at one time and was placed upon the machine automatically by pushing
of a button, without winding or inserting a new needle. Victor, Columbia, or
any other record could be used. The ten-inch records were placed on one side
and the twelve-inch records on the other. The editor has never seen a photo of
the machine exhibited in the showroom on Walnut Street, but it seems it may
have been a serious competitor to the self-operating "Gabel-Ola"
introduced in December 1916 by the Gabelˈs
Entertainer Co. in
Chicago. Julius Wellner had at least 15 American and British patents to his
name, and the last patent 1,491,252 for a ˈSound-Reproducing Machineˈ
filed on the 10th April 1917, and granted on the 22nd April 1924, was sold to the patent trust RCA (Radio Corporation of America) founded in 1919. It is interesting, that the Julius Wellner patent for
a ˈRecord-Changing Mechanism for Sound-Reproducing Machinesˈ filed in
1912 was mentioned in the patent listing on the first modern-style Gabel
phonographs in the early 1930s. Finally, after Julius Wellner passed away the
remaining agency activities were sold to the Lawson Piano Co. founded in New
York in 1906 (Lawson & Co.) by Charles Benjamin
Lawson (1855-1924), a former music box business associate, and his sons William Wheelock
Lawson (1880-1963) and Arthur Morris Lawson
(1889-1953). The company manufactured player-pianos and the "Lawson
Universal" phonograph series. When the senior founder retired in 1920 the
company was incorporated as Lawson Piano & Phonograph Corp..
Unfortunately, Julius Wellner died much too
young of pneumonia on the 15th November 1917, in his
home at 1929 North 22nd Street, Philadelphia, and he was buried on the 19th
from St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church on 23rd and Berks Streets. His grave marker can be
found at Holy Cross Cemetery (Section 9, Range 11), Baily Road, Yeadon in Delaware
County, Pennsylvania. In 1920 the widow Maude Marie May Wellner married the
Swedish born chef Otto H. Thoren (1874-1962), introduced to her by her younger
brother Harry Rogers May (1878-1957). The editor has not found the grave
location of first wife Ellen (Nellie)
in Newark, but second wife Maude Marie was interred at Arlington Cemetery (Woodlawn), Drexel
Hill in Delaware County, the same plot as that of her
brother's family. The son Charles Julius Wellner married Jessica Schulein in
Hawaii on the 20th November 1936 (licensed 2nd January
1940), and he died on the 27th March 1994. The grave marker of
Charles Julius and his wife Jessica (1908-1988) can be found at the Fort
Rosecrans National Cemetery (GN1, 0, 221), Point Loma near San Diego in
California. The daughter Katherine Martha (Kitty)
Wellner married Albert F. Volk, and she died on the 13th
October 1976. The grave marker of Katherine and her husband Albert (1892-1976)
is the same as that of Julius Wellner at the Holy Cross Cemetery. Further
information of course always appreciated.
Gert J. Almind
Thanks to
Maria Volk McGuire, Clifton
Heights, Pennsylvania
* Year 1869 on grave marker is correct, stated on
both passport application and death certificate, but the year 1868 can be found
in an unpublished story entitled "Juliusˈ Life & Families"
told by the daughter Kitty Wellner.