Juke Box Transition? A Fond Remembrance Of The Past And Future Of The Juke Box

Can the venerable Juke Box survive in the digital and MP3 world? The MP3 Jukebox is a here in many forms and expressions but still the standard Juke Box is still here.

Juke Box styling came along from the austere wooden boxes in the early 1930s to glorious lighted displays with plastic and color liveliness of the Rudolf Wurlitzer 850 Peacock juke box of the early 40's. Alas once the United States government went into the 2nd world war, metal as well as plastic were required for the war effort.

Music juke box production was restricted. The 1943 Wurlitzer 950 juke box featured wooden coin slides to conserve on alloy. It should also be noted that since the juke box mechanisms were made of metal, they weren't built during this era, instead, an new console was developed and the inside portions of the juke box were set into it. Since most of the mechanisms were built by hand, many of these juke boxes had parts which never fit the right way and needed adjustment.

The 1943 Wurlitzer Victory console had glass lit panels instead of plastic. After the war, materials were in stock once again and there was a great growth in juke box manufacturing. The Wurlitzer juke box represents the look and is likely the most popular juke box design of all time. Many of of these lived on into the 1950's in active use and are forever related with the fifties in pop music culture despite their 40s origin, because of their unique visual prominence and production volume.

After the '40s, the juke box trends in general went more three-dimensional and "hi-tech" in appearance, distancing their look from "standard" juke box appearances such as ancient Grecian, renaissance, and Gothic architecture designs detected in the 'forties model juke boxes.

Music juke boxes of the forties came to be known as Golden Age because of the yellow catalin plastic. Music juke boxes of the fifties are called Silver Age because of the overriding chromium-plate design. With the ascension of drive in restaurants in the 1960's, restaurants wanted to get clients in and out quickly.

Today, the diner juke box has largely been replaced by other sorts of amusemententertainment media, yet when you go to a place that still has a juke box, young and old are still attracted to their almost garish styling. The juke box as a mass media device may be dying yet the nostalgia is something that may never leave us.