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Apple iPod

Author: 
Carroll Gantz
Designer: 
Ive, Jonathon
Date: 
2001
iPods.jpg

In 2000, digital music players were either big and clunky or small and useless with terrible user interfaces. Apple saw an opportunity and introduced its first portable music player. The iPod was the first MP3 player to hold 1,000 songs and 5 gigabytes of data. It weighed only 6.5 ounces and was powered by a rechargeable lithium battery that enabled ten hours of continuous playback. At $400, critics thought it was too expensive, lacked Windows compatibility, and disliked the unconventional scroll wheel. Despite this, it sold beyond expectations and went on to revolutionize the entire music industry. Designed by an Apple project team, including industrial designer Jonathan Ive, it was a year in development after ordered by Steve Jobs. The name iPod was inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the phrase ‘open the pod bay door, Hal,’ referred to the white EVA Pods of the Discovery One spaceship. The iPod was awarded a gold IDEA award in 2002, and by 2007, sales of various models, including Classic (2004), Mini (2004), Nano (2006), Shuffle (2005) and Touch (2007), exceeded 50 million units.

Sources: 
100 Years of Design includes excerpts from a book by Carroll M. Gantz, FIDSA, entitled, Design Chronicles: Significant Mass-produced Designs of the 20th Century, published August 2005 by Schiffer Publications, Ltd.
Copyright Information: 
I own or have obtained the rights to the image(s) included with this article and grant industrialdesignhistory.com the right to post it(them) on its website and make use of it(them) in print media with proper attribution.

Wurlitzer

Author: 
Carroll Gantz
Designer: 
Fuller, Paul
Date: 
1946
Wurlitzer image-1946

In 1946 Wurlitzer introduced its Model 1015 jukebox, designed by industrial designer Paul Fuller. Replete with chrome, garish colors and bubbling lights, it became a classic and ultimate cultural typeform, dispensing music in every diner across the country for the next fifteen years. The first public "music boxes" were called Nickelodeons. In 1900 there were 2000 of them in Brooklyn alone. The term was a combination of "nickel" and "melody." These coin-operated phonographs, invented in 1889 by Louis Glass, used ear-tubes like musical hookah pipes, in order to hear the faint music. In 1927, the Automatic Music Company of Grand Rapids, MI, marketed the first contemporary "Automatic Phonograph," a coin-operated, multiple-selection phonograph which amplified the sound electrically, similarly to the way the radio does. They soon became informally known as "jukeboxes," as they were often used in the "juke joints" (sugar cane cutter hangouts) in the South. The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company (founded 1856) introduced its first "jukebox" in 1934, the 10-selection Model P-10, with a window showing the changing mechanism. The name "jukebox" (See PR 1927) only became accepted by the industry in 1939, when big band leader Glenn Miller was quoted using the term by Time magazine. In 1955, Raymond Loewy put the design curse on jukeboxes (as well as the US automotive industry), by calling Detroit's new cars "jukeboxes on wheels" in a speech to the Society of Automotive Engineers. Wurlitzer produced jukeboxes until the product became passé in the 1960s, and discontinued US production in 1974, but its German subsidiary continues production today.

Sources: 
100 Years of Design consists of excerpts from a book by Carroll M. Gantz, FIDSA, entitled, Design Chronicles: Significant Mass-produced Designs of the 20th Century, published August 2005 by Schiffer Publications, Ltd.
Copyright Information: 
I own or have obtained the rights to the image(s) included with this article and grant industrialdesignhistory.com the right to post it(them) on its website and make use of it(them) in print media with proper attribution.