For those of you not familiar with this apparatus, a Scopitone is a
juke box type of machine, which shows a sound motion picture on an
enclosed screen using a modified internal 16mm rear projection system.
It was the forerunner of MTV & the video juke box.

Several thousand were produced in the US and France.  Each one was
loaded with 36 3-to-4 minute color films, and a customer could choose
to watch and listen to any one by inserting a quarter (or a franc in
France?).

I remember a heated debate at the Mechanical Music Society on whether
or not this could be considered a mechanical music item.  I don't
remember the result.

Anyhow, I have one of the units from the 1960's with about 100 films
and I wondered if any MMDigest subscriber has or knows of a complete
list of the titles, artists and catalog numbers of these films.  There
were 300 to 400 different films produced.

Ed Kigler

 [ I'd place the Scopitone in the same category as jukeboxes: coin-
 [ operated entertainment with sound provided by an analog audio
 [ recording.  In contrast, music boxes and nickelodeons and player
 [ organs generate the sound "in real-time", controlled by a binary
 [ data file of on-off commands for each tone.  -- Robbie