JukeBoxes

Coin-operated music boxes and player pianos were the first forms of automated coin-operated musical devices. These were soon followed in the 1890s by coin-operated phonographs.The introduction of recording on wax cylinder records made possible records which could survive many plays, and early operators converted cylinder phonographs to accept a coin, usually a nickel, which 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. However, by the early 1900s the novelty of the phonograph wore off and this, combined with the advent of phonographs in the home, as well as the increasing sophistication and volume of mechanical orchestrions in public facilities, led to the decline of the coin-operated phonograph industry.