History of the Jukebox

Born in Sweden in 1871, Justice P. Seeburg came to the United States at the age of 16. He settled in Chicago and worked in the piano industry as a mechanic and supervisor. In 1907, J.P. Seeburg started his own manufacturing company using his own name. The J.P. Seeburg Piano Co. soon became the premier maker of Orchestrions in the United States. These automatic pianos had several instruments inside that could sound like a complete band. Seeburg continued with this line of instruments until 1927 when he discontinued the manufacturing of pianos and retooled for making the new coin-operated phonograph.

Seeburg was one of the first manufacturers of a multi-select jukebox with the introduction of the "Audiophone" in 1928. This wide-body, eight-selection box had pneumatic control valves making it half nickelodeon and half phonograph. This model was a reasonable success, but sales never reached huge numbers. By the 1930s other manufacturers had entered the market and were actually selling more jukeboxes than Seeburg. The next model, the Selectophone, was an engineering disaster. Warped spindles made operators mad and this mistake almost put the company under. When J.P. Seeburg entered his 60s in the late 1930s he turned the business over to his son Noel. He was a very sharp businessman and reorganized the company to compete more effectively with Wurlitzer and Rock-Ola. From 1940 until World War II, Seeburg produced some very reasonable and glitzy jukeboxes and did quite well.

This mechanism was so reliable that it nearly put all other manufacturers of vinyl record playing jukeboxes out of business. In 1950 Seeburg introduced the M100B, the first jukebox to play 45 rpm vinyl records. During the 1950s Seeburg enjoyed a dominant place in jukebox production, and in 1955 introduced the V-200, the first 200-select jukebox.

Like most other jukebox manufacturers, Seeburg suffered through the changing demand in the 1970s when CD boxes came around and the Seeburg began to fade into obscurity. A last ditch effort was made to save the company in the early ‘90s and several CD jukeboxes were made at that time. Eventually, what was left of the company closed up shop and now nothing remains.