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This Week in Tech History: The First Jukebox

On this edition of "This Week in Tech History", Chris tells us of the first jukebox, making its appearance in a San Francisco saloon.

1889 – The first jukebox was placed in service in a saloon in San Francisco. Juke, at the time, was a slang word for a disorderly house, or house of ill repute. The unit, developed by Louis Glass, contained an Edison tinfoil phonograph with four listening tubes. There was a coin slot for each tube. 5 cents bought a few minutes of music. The contraption took in $1,000 in six months!

1963 – Bell Telephone introduced the first commercial push-button telephone. The push-button phone replaced the rotary dial phone, which had been in use for decades.

1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released. Windows was received poorly by critics who felt the operating system put too much emphasis on mouse input at a time when mouse use was not yet widespread.

1992 – The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, was introduced at the COMDEX convention in Las Vegas, Nevada.

1995 – Toy Story was released by Pixar Animation Studios as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery. Pixar was of course so-founded by the man who brought us Apple… Steve Jobs.

2006 – Nintendo’s first video game console with motion control, the Wii, is released. It was Nintendo’s seventh-generation home console

Written by Chris Graveline

Chris has covered consumer technology for over 20 years. He is the host of This Week in Tech History as well as a regular co-host on "Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline" and our Technical Director.

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