Super cool! Thank you for sharing!Brad
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On Tuesday, February 20, 2024, 12:15 PM, Federico Croci via Jukebox-list jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com wrote:
Hello everyone!
In the 1960s, here in Italy, you could find some curious versions of italian-made jukeboxes, actually hand operated. Some of these were built by well known italian factories of the time, like SIDAM, which in the eighties will become a well known manufacturer of video games.
How they works? They are quite simple - there's a circular opening in the front glass, large enough to let you insert your hand, but not enough to permit you to take out the record. You choose a record from the list, pick it up by hand from the rack inside, and insert it in the player. Player it's usually similar to a domestic portable record player. Once the record it's inside the player, you insert the coin and the record start playing.
These cabinets are smaller than a normal jukebox. and they were much more economic than a full real jukebox. Also, they obviously have very few troubles and failures, while operating.
There were several models of these kind of hand-jukeboxes (don't know how to call them). Some have some sort of control - for example, a safety system to avoid you can missort the records, things like that. I can say I've always seen this machines as manufactured by local italian firms, never seen something similar coming from a foreign manufacturer.
My question is, have you never seen something similar, in other countries? Do you know of an official name for this kind of coin-op machines?
Here are some photos of two of these curious machines I own, the first one being the Sidam stand-up machine, the second one a counter top version:
https://www.tilt.it/sidam_fono_princess_1964.jpg https://www.tilt.it/little_box_1.jpg https://www.tilt.it/little_box_2.jpg