What's A Scopitone?
What's A Scopitone?
It's a "Film Jukebox" invented in France in the early 1960's (from surplus World War II airplane parts!) and also the films (the precursors of todays music videos) which played on it. Click on the Scopitonic Links for more info and the Watch Scopitones category to check some out.
Pretty DARN UGLY!!!
Posted by: sandy | September 29, 2006 at 12:28 PM
This looks very interesting and I want to find out more about it
Posted by: James Wilson | September 30, 2006 at 07:42 PM
I suspect the image quality was likely to have been quite superior to YouTube.
Posted by: curtsy | November 15, 2006 at 12:55 PM
Awesome. Sandy - who commented "pretty darn ugly!!!" - your dumb as fuck
Posted by: spetts | December 02, 2006 at 09:38 PM
Sorry, but SCOPITONE came second. The first video Juke box was invented and realized in Italy. After came the scopitone, and together are gone in US.
Posted by: Roberto | December 04, 2006 at 12:14 PM
Wow! An MTV jukebox. There was a vision in the 60s. Very cool.
Posted by: SpringDivers | December 28, 2006 at 08:16 AM
By the way, spetts, it's spelt "you're".
(Misspelling insults targeted at someone elses intelligence does not exactly make them more effective)
Posted by: thrawn | March 22, 2007 at 08:31 PM
Actually, thrawn, it's "spelled", not "spelt". Spelt is a kind of flour. lol!
Posted by: Doctress Julia | March 28, 2007 at 05:57 PM
Ah, such great memories of a Scopitone jukebox. I grew up in the US Army and one of the major pluses was living in other countries. In 1961 - 1964 we lived in Spain & England. And it was in England that I watched my first "video" on a video jukebox. Whoa! What a concept - watching the artist sing their song in an entertaining (hopefully) format. I was disappointed when we came back to the states and everyone was saying, "What are you talking about?". Yeah, Rick Nelson sang songs on the family TV show, Ozzie & Harriet, but he just sang - no entertaining activity to go with it. Leave it to the Beatles to run with the idea. Oh, yeah, it was great living in England when Beatlemania hit there a year before it hit the states. jbpink
Posted by: JB Pink | March 29, 2007 at 06:25 AM
I worked for the Telesign company on 47th street in Chicago in the early '60s. We were to manufacture the product but I didn't stay with the firm. The first unit to arrive came with all french films that were XXX. I can't recall the name of the man who owned the company. I know that he was Jewish and he had one hell of a temper.
Telesign's main business was making advertising signs for Anheiser Busch and Standard Oil among others.
Joe SUllivan Indianapolis, IN
Posted by: Joe Sullivan | August 04, 2007 at 02:43 PM