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Vintage Amusement Rides


Brian..

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28 minutes ago, robothut said:

I like when Ozzy says, I was really good the other day. Aint it the truth.

I'm always awesome yesterday! 😉

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Brilliant vertical pinball. Demonstrates decaying orbits while providing entertainment. The Mechanics wow me.

Fantastic restoration. 🤩

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I'm old enough to remember playing for hours on these machines. The space theme makes them that extra bit special.

 

 

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That's interesting Brian, Never entertained the thought of Someone actually playing these vintage games 

In the late 60's the local amusement park still had fortune tellers, Mutoscopes etc so guess they lingered for quite a while

 

This isn't space related but sent my 1939 panoram out for repair , Turned out quite nice 

That  may be ella fitzgerald . The machine also had a light finish rejuvenation but everything kept 100% Original 

 

 

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I never seen one either, amazing looking projector..the mechanics is cool.

 

.In the 1980's Ghatti's Pizza played projection screen, I watched cartoons on.

 

Kind of a precursor that machine of yours.👌

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Thanks Gents 

Here's a description cribbed from Wikedpedia 

 

Panoram was the trademark name of a visual jukebox that played music accompanied by a synched, filmed image (the effect being the equivalent of 1980s music videos) popular within the United States during the 1940s. The device consisted of a jukebox playing a closed-loop 16mm film reel projected onto a glass screen.

The Panoram is now best known for the vast library of short, three-minute music videos that were created for it. Called soundies, these films featured most of the great musical stars of the period, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Cab Calloway. Many of the filmed interludes survive and are considered a priceless archive.

The Panoram was priced more than $10,000 in 2006 dollars. It was generally seen in bars, cafes, and upscale dancing establishments where they ran as a curiosity. Following World War II, the device never recovered its previous popularity due to competition from television.

The Soundies were printed backwards (mirror image) so that they would appear in a correct orientation when played in a Panoram machine. A Panoram was the size of a refrigerator and employed a series of mirrors to reflect the image from a projector onto a 27-inch, rear-projection, etched-glass screen in a tight, enclosed cabinet. The popular machines were first produced in 1939 by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago, Illinois, (which also made art-deco, fancy slot machines) and found their way into countless soda shops, taverns, bus and train stations and other public places across the nation. The specially made 16mm films ran in a continuous loop and stopped when a notch cut in the film allowed a micro switch to engage a step-back relay at the end of a Soundie. The patron then put another dime in the machine to run the series of eight 2- to 3-minute films again. The Panoram mechanics were housed in an Art Deco, high quality wood cabinet, the Soundies being 3½ minute films that typically showed jazz and other musicians of the day, as well as dance troupes and other acts. With the beginning of World War II, production of the Soundies and Panoram machines was drastically reduced due to a wartime raw material shortage and the Mills Panoram's 1940 success quickly faded.

In the early 1940s, Al Donahue Band made 7 or 8 of the first "Soundies" at Radio City Music Hall, some of which are available on YouTube.

The basic concept behind the Panoram would be revived in the early 1960s with the Scopitone.

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