Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1931-12)

December 1931, Vol. VI, No. 3 43 the public in 1890. The issue of January, 1891 (Volume 1, No. 1) of “The Phonogram, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Science of Sound and Recording of Speech,” (and the first periodical publication in the world de- voted to the talking machine industry), con- tains an article under the heading “Bottled Music” in which the Washington correspon- dent of the Boston Transcript is quoted with regard to the Marine Band, “which may be called the President’s Own, inasmuch as it supplies all the music at the White House . .. rendering itself immortal by having its most harmonious strains bottled in large quanti- ties.” Then he proceeds to describe the Co- lumbia Company’s daily recording of Marine Band selections, “which are thus recorded on wax cylinders imperishably for the enter- tainment of people in all parts of the United States, who have simply to drop a nickel in the slot and listen to the concert.” On another page in the same issue of The Phonogram is published a news letter from E. D. Easton, President of the Columbia Com- pany, and dated November 10, 1890, one paragraph of which says: “We have more than one hundred nickel-in-the-slot phono- graphs on exhibition in the various drug stores, hotels, depots, etc. in our territory, and find these machines profitable.” I well remember the excitement and ela- tion with which we placed our first coin-slot phonographs in public places, such as drug stores, hotel lobbies, railroad station waiting rooms, and bar rooms. In the beginning it was difficult to induce the managers of these various establishments to permit us to place the instruments in their premises, even though we offered them a liberal percentage of the receipts as an inducement. Before very long, however, their value, both as a source of income and as a means of attracting people into their premises, was so well es- tablished that we had more applications than we could fill and were in position to pick and choose those who would be favored by having a coin-slot phonograph allotted to them. The early instruments were driven by small electric motors deriving their power from a storage battery, the latter concealed in a compartment in the base of the cabinet. The cabinet was rather ornate, but quite in keeping with the popular tastes of those days, and was of a height to place the coin-slot and the hearing tubes within comfortable reach of an adult person of average eight. A plate glass front exposed the upper part of the phonograph and the reproducing and operating mechanism, and watching the cylinder revolve and the reproducer feed it- self across the record seemed to interest the public quite as much as listening to the music. In the first model of the coin-slot phono- graph, the listener started the machine run- ning, after dropping the coin, by pushing a rod which extended outside of the cabinet, this action serving to start the electric motor, raise the reproducer from the cylin- der, and push it back to the beginning of the record, and lower it into place, at which time the reproduction of the music started. Later on this crude method of operation was sup- planted by wholly automatic mechanism in which the mere dropping of the coin was all that was necessary to start the phonograph in operation. This important improvement was entirely the invention and development of Columbia. The care and maintenance of coin-slot phonographs, scattered widely as they were all over the city, entailed the employment of quite a staff of young men who were called inspectors. Each inspector had an allotted district. He used a bicycle to make his rounds and was required to visit each instru- ment in his district at least once every day, carrying with him a case full of cylinder records with announcement cards to match each record, and a small kit of tools. The records were changed daily and the cards containing title of selection, character of music and name of performer were inserted in space provided for them at the top of the cabinet. Each machine was thoroughly in- spected, adjusted and oiled daily. A horse- drawn wagon with driver made the rounds of all machines daily, with a supply of batteries to insert fresh ones where needed and take away the exhausted ones for recharging. Of course there were emergency calls for fresh jatteries or for adjustment of something that had gone wrong with an instrument, and these had to be taken care of in addition to the daily inspection service. Even in those early days, when an infant industry was struggling to get on its feet and learn to walk, there were critics of the ethics of permitting such a wonderful instrument as the talking machine to be prostituted to the collection of such picayune coins as five- cent nickels. In the issue of The Phonogram, for March, 1891, there is an article under the heading “The Nickel-in-the-Slot Machine De- fended” by W. Conyngton, an official of the Louisiana Phonograph Company. It pur- ports to be an argument between the slot machine and the business phonograph as to their relative values and cultural importance in which, of course, the slot machine thoroughly justifies its existence. At any rate, the slot machine continued to increase in popularity and to enrich the coffers of the phonograph companies, and it is not violat- ing a secret to say that it was the only regu-