US #2911-12
1995 Juke Box
- First Day Cover bearing both stamps
- Part of the American Culture series
- Covered the Presorted First-Class rate
Category of Stamp: Definitive
Set: American Culture
Value: 25¢, Presorted First-Class Bulk rate
First Day of Issue: March 17, 1995
First Day City: New York, ... more
US #2911-12
1995 Juke Box
- First Day Cover bearing both stamps
- Part of the American Culture series
- Covered the Presorted First-Class rate
Category of Stamp: Definitive
Set: American Culture
Value: 25¢, Presorted First-Class Bulk rate
First Day of Issue: March 17, 1995
First Day City: New York, New York
Printing Method/Format: Photogravure, Coils
Perforations: 9.8
Reason the stamp was issued: It was issued to pay the postage for the first-class, presort letter rate.
About the stamp design: The stamp pictures a Wurlitzer Model 1015 Jukebox, the most popular of the automatic record players. Bill Nelson created the image for this stamp, along with the Auto Tail Fin.
About the printing process: This coil stamp was produced by two printers: the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and Stamp Venturers.
First Day City: The First Day of Issue ceremony took place during the Postage Stamp Mega-Event in New York City.
About the American Culture series: Three new definitive coil series were introduced in 1995: “American Scenes,” “American Transportation,” and “American Culture.”
The American Culture series shows items of our nation’s popular culture. The art director for the series, Carl Herrman, said, “The series tries to take a look at American creativity and at things that no other country could claim.”
The 15¢ Automobile Tail Fin stamp features the fin of a 1959 Cadillac, and was used for presorted first-class postcards. The 25¢ Juke Box coil stamp was intended for presorted first-class letters.
The 25¢ Diner stamp was issued in 1998. It pictures a typical restaurant popular in the middle of the 20th century.
In 2000, the New York Public Library Lions stamp was issued. The image is a contemporary rendition of one of the statues located at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Library.
The Woody Wagon stamp design is based on the wood-paneled vehicles produced between 1929 and 1953 and used variously to transport guests to and from railroad stations, to accommodate family travel, and to carry surfers and their surfboards to the beach. The stamp pictures a 1949 Ford wagon with a surfboard hanging out the back.
The 10¢ Atlas stamp is based on a photograph by Horst Hamann of the Atlas Statue that stands outside Rockefeller Center in New York City. Lee Lawrie created the Atlas sculpture in 1937, and Kenneth Lynch made the skeletal, heavenly spheres that Atlas supports.
The design for the Wisdom stamp in the American Culture Series was taken from Lee Lawrie's art deco sculpture, "Wisdom With Light and Sound," at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Words beneath the relief sculpture are from Isaiah 33:6 in the Old Testament: "Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy time." The Wisdom stamp is the only issue in the American Culture Series that is not a coil stamp.
History the stamp represents:
On November 23, 1889, the world’s first jukebox was displayed and used at the Palais Royal Saloon in San Francisco, California.
In the early and mid-1800s, coin-operated music boxes and player pianos grew increasingly popular. Requiring a coin payment, these music devices used paper rolls, metal disks, or metal cylinders to play music on one or more instruments inside the machine.
In the late 1870s, a man named Louis Glass grew tired of his job manning telegraph lines for Western Union. So he left his job in search of more exciting prospects. At the time, the telephone was an emerging new technology, so Glass invested in a few California phone companies, ultimately becoming general manager of the Pacific State Telephone and Telegraph Company.
Even as a successful businessman, Glass wasn’t satisfied. He soon caught on to another popular craze of the time, the phonograph. He bought the Pacific Phonograph Company, and several others in California, Washington, and Oregon. Learning more about this new device, Glass had an idea. He and his partner, William S. Arnold, tinkered with the phonograph to create something new. Their new device could play songs from a wax cylinder phonograph, but only if a nickel was inserted into the machine. Because of this, they first called the device, “The nickel-in-the-slot phonograph.” Their first design used an Edison Class M Electric Phonograph with a device they patented as “Coin Actuated Attachment for Phonograph.”
Glass and Arnold installed their new machine in San Francisco’s Palais Royal Saloon on November 23, 1889. Little is known of the events of the day or what followed, as the saloon closed down within a year or so, and the later 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed much of the area. But at an 1890 conference, Glass claimed he’d installed 15 such machines that earned him over $4,000 (about $539,000 today). While Glass is often credited as the creator of the jukebox, there were other inventors working on similar devices in England at around the same time.
As this new device appeared to be so popular, many other businessmen soon developed their own versions. Some included listening tubes (similar to headphones). These early players usually only played one song, so several devices would be set up in one place so people could listen to multiple songs, each on its own machine. It wasn’t until 1918 that Hobart C. Niblack patented a part that could automatically change records. This ultimately led to the first selective jukeboxes in the 1920s.
Although the machines had been around for decades, they didn’t get their popular name until the 1940s. The work jukebox was based on the term “juke joint,” from the Creole word “juke” for disorderly, rowdy, or wicked.
As the years went on, the technology in the machines improved. The machines could hold more and more records, while not taking up as much space. Some machines were fitted with song counters, keeping track of the most-requested songs, so the unpopular ones could be replaced. Early, plain wooden jukeboxes were eventually replaced with stylishly lighted, colorful jukeboxes made with marbleized plastic. However, when the US entered World War II metal and plastic were needed for the war effort and no new jukeboxes were made until 1946.
Jukeboxes were at their most popular between the 1940s and 1960s, with about three-quarters of American records eventually being put into jukeboxes. Jukeboxes are still produced and used today, though most people used CDs or MP3s, but they often feature the flashy styles and lights of the jukeboxes of the 1950s.
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