Seeburg Corporation

Founded in 1902, its first products were Orchestrions and automatic pianos but after the arrival of gramophone records, the company developed a series of "coin-operated phonographs.

"[1] Before it began manufacturing its signature suite of jukebox products, Seeburg was considered to be one of the "big four" of the top coin-operated phonograph companies alongside AMI, Wurlitzer, and Rock-Ola.

[2] At the height of jukebox popularity, Seeburg machines were synonymous with the technology[3] and a major quotidian brand of American teenage life.

[5] Automated musical equipment, such as coin-operated phonographs and orchestrions, was manufactured under the J.P. Seeburg and Company name for most of its early years.

[6] The Seeburg Style L (Lilliputian) Nickelodeon was a coin-operated 54 note player piano with its suction pump driven by an electric motor.

The classic M100C is featured early in the opening of the Happy Days TV series, although the actual spinning 45 rpm record shown is being played on a Rock-Ola.

[citation needed] The Seeburg "Select-O-Matic" mechanism stores the records in a linear magazine and plays them vertically clamped to a flywheel turntable.

[8] Seeburg acquired Williams (pinball and other games) and Gulbransen (electronic organs and drum machines) in 1964 and the H. N. White Company (King brass and woodwind instruments) in 1965.

In 1965, the Seeburg Corporation announced that it was establishing a new music performance rights organization to compete with ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.