Welcome to our HIST 325: American Technology & Culture Fall 2019 group blog on the Jukebox. This page is managed by Glynnis Farleigh, Reilly Miller, and Jack Sweetak.
For our group technology project, we decided to research the jukebox. The jukebox, a music-playing device, borrowed technology from Thomas Edison’s 1877 phonograph, alongside that of coin-operation and music-selection technology, therefore broadening the reach of music and entertainment to a wide audience of Americans.
We chose the jukebox because of the way in which it revolutionized the American music industry, both in the rise of record companies, who, in turn broadened the reach of musicians, as well as the way in which music selection became accessible and individualized. We also are interested in the unique look and aesthetic of the variety of jukeboxes produced between the 1930s and 1950s!
You can navigate our site using the top menu bar, which includes all categories of our work, proposal, and citations. We have chosen to divide the history of the jukebox into chronological sections that each answer a series of guided questions from our primary and secondary source research.
While you can navigate this website at your pace, we have formatted it to be in this chronological order:
- 1. Invention and Development
- 2. Key Components and Antecedents to the Jukebox
- 3. The First “Jukebox”
- 4. Early Record Companies
- 5. Rise to Popularity & Golden Age
- 6. Role in American Culture
- 7. Jukebox Companies & the Music Industry
- 8. Top Ten Singles on the Wurlitzer Jukebox
- 9. Competing Technologies & Decline
- 10. The Contemporary Jukebox: 1980s-Today
To learn more about the structure of our project, please view our Project Site Outline.
Credit to our Site Icon
Jukebox isolated illustration, designed by Vexels can be found here.
Credit to our Header Image
Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Smitty’s Jukebox Museum in tiny Pharr in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Pharr Texas United States, None. [Between 1980 and 2006] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2011632355/.