[Jukebox-list] SEEBURG M100A TRIVIA

[David Breneman]

--- Ron Rich <ronnnrich at yahoo.com> wrote:

>   I can 'splain that as it was 'splained to me---
>   Seeburg was unsure that "100" selections would be a hit with the
> operator. They never wanted the operator to see the fact that only
> about 10-20 % of the records, made up 99% of play (as they found
> out in pre-release testing). It turned out that the "locations"
> forced the 100 play sales, not the operator.

That makes sense.  It certinaly couldn't have been that hard
to include a popularity meter.  Wes' response suggested that
the 45 mechanism was the ultimate goal of M100 development
even as the M100-A was being designed.  It's certainly
possible, as RCA had been working on a "compact disk" since
the late 1930s.  But I have a hard time believing Seeburg
considered the M100-A a "stopgap" because so much R&D was put
into it, and none of the record changer tooling could be
applied to the 45 RPM mechanism.  So I doubt they were looking
to the 45 much before the M100-A came out.  RCA's paper on the
development of the 45 came out in June of 1949, after the
M100-A had been on the market for half a year.  I've always
wondered if Seeburg made any real money on the M100-A at all.
Hard to imagine all that tooling was paid for in just two
years' worth of production.  Even though they were a leading
force in the success of the 45, I'd imagine they were
expecting a much longer transition period.  Does anyone
know if there are any surviving design treatments for 
follow-on models with the 78 mechanism?  A 78 version of
the VL-200 would be really cool.  :-)



David Breneman         david_breneman at yahoo.com


       
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