Rudolph Wurlitzer Company
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company , Wurlitzer for short , was an American company that manufactured musical instruments , barrel organs and jukeboxes between 1853 and 1985 . The company also produced string instruments , harps , organs , pianos and the famous Wurlitzer electric piano .
history
It was founded by Franz Rudolph Wurlitzer (born February 1, 1831 in Schöneck / Vogtl. , Saxony ; † January 14, 1914 in Cincinnati / Ohio ), who emigrated to the USA in June 1853 and became a US citizen on October 8, 1859 has been. In August 1856 he founded a music equipment retailer that received an order to supply the US Army. In 1861 he began producing musical instruments, in 1872 his brother Anton Wurlitzer, who had also emigrated, became a co-owner of the company, which in 1890 became the Rudolph Wurlitzer Companytraded. From 1880 onwards, the store had a catalog with over 200 pages. In the same year the first piano bearing the Wurlitzer name was built. A fire destroyed the previous main building in December 1904. The rapid growth of the American music industry also allowed Wurlitzer's company to grow, so that it moved to a six-story building in 1906. One of the last activities of Rudolph Wurlitzer sen. was in 1910 the acquisition of a bankrupt organ manufacturer, the Hope-Jones Organ Company . This was Wurlitzer over three decades one of the most successful manufacturers, among others, cinema organs (to about 1940, when the sound film the silent film had repressed and there was no significant market for cinema organs more). When Wurlitzer died in 1914, his three sons were already established as managers in the company.
The son of the founder, Farny Wurlitzer, 1933 acquired a patented music box mechanism, and shortly after the first jukebox ( "jukebox") was named Debutante successful hit. From 1935 (model 312) to 1947 (model 1100), the Swiss furniture designer Paul M. Fuller designed the most successful jukeboxes of all time as chief designer. He designed the products in a colorful, chrome-decorated Art Deco style so that customers would also be attracted when no music was being played. As early as 1936 Wurlitzer had risen to become the market leader with 44,397 of these devices. In 1941, the company moved its headquarters to Chicago . In 1946 the Wurlitzer 1015 "bubbler" designed by Fuller was brought onto the market, which became the most famous jukebox due to its rising gas bubbles and a bestseller with 56,242 units.
The first electric pianos came onto the market in 1955, and in 1956 they already had 2,000 employees. After a total of 750,000 jukeboxes with around 100 models, their production was discontinued in 1974.
In 1985 Wurlitzer was acquired by the Baldwin Piano Company (then the largest American piano manufacturer). The manufacture of electric organs ceased and the Wurlitzer brand was used for pianos. Baldwin was already suffering from sales difficulties and was unable to maintain its market position. In 2001 Baldwin was taken over by the guitar manufacturer Gibson . In 2006 Gibson also bought Deutsche Wurlitzer , which until then held the naming rights for Wurlitzer jukeboxes. This company went bankrupt in 2013 and has been self-employed ever since.
Web links
- Immigrant Entrepreneurship, German-American Business Biographies about Wurlitzer
- Internet presence of Deutsche Wurlitzer GmbH
- Picture gallery of the Wurlitzer models
- diepresse.com of March 9, 2016: The Wurlitzer jukebox company is insolvent . , accessed August 8, 2016