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The Caille machines have always intrigued me, but not much info ever surfaced in that area of collecting. I had a very good friend that was a dedicated historian of the coin op genre, but he sadly passed way before his time. I do have some musings of his to share, and some little info, but I’m hoping someone in phonograph land has more.
The Caille brothers, Arthur and Adolph were based in Detroit. Some of the most desirable machines in the coin op field of arcade, gambling, vending and service machines such as weighing scales were produced by these brothers. Extremely well made, very ornate, and then and now sought after.
They dove into the music machine category right after the turn of the century ( 1900) and produced coin operated phonographs and also an illustrated song machine. There were the Caille-o-Phone and the Scope-o-phone. Sometimes the hyphen is misplaced or forgotten, so that makes it harder to search.
As for the phonograph machine, they made two versions. The Model A and the Model B. Shawn has one of his wonderful videos explain the working of the model B. In this version , the phonograph plays with a huge spring mechanism, and after playing, an electric motor rewinds the spring and gets the reproducer set back to start. In the other version, A, it is run totally by electric motor. The top mechanism is totally different in construction. Totally !
Speaking now of the top works, there are 3 different versions I’m aware of. I recall years ago the phonograph machine being shown somewhere in a phono book and the caption stated it was a Columbia machine,……not so! All three are very robust in construction, much more heavily made so than a normal home type machine. They are not adaptations of a Columbia or Edison machine, but a stand alone, seriously made unit. The only connection I can see to either maker is the use of the Columbia Lyric spring loaded reproducer on them. I don’t possess a lot of phono knowledge so I’m not aware if an Edison reproducer would work.
These top works have a patent plate affixed but the patent has nothing to do with record machines, but instead relates to their picture show ( peep show) mechanism.
My friend, before he passed, shared a story about the Caille brothers dislike of Mr Edison. He pointed to one of their other machines , the Bird-o-Phone…… this was an ornate oak cabinet, with a coin slot. When you dropped the coin in, you would look through a viewing window and see two canary’s singing away. The front of this machine had very ornate glue chipped glass sign panels and one stated boldly “ Edison Outdone ! “. Also interesting that the brothers didn’t use any Edison motors in their machines.this is likely a minor issue, and I do wish I would have found out more way back. My Scope-o-phone has a Westinghouse motor and I haven’t been able to identify the maker of the Model A cail-o-phone motor, but that one is heavily modified to do what it does.
I’m wondering if anyone else has seen either of these machines out in the wild, or perhaps know about any legal issues between the Caille’s and Mr. Edison. I’ve always assumed , mainly because of the low survival rate of these wonderful machines, that possibly there was a patent infringement problem. I do know from history bit Columbia and Edison didn’t fool around much when it came to that. Instead, they were likely ‘both feet on it! ‘.
My last point for now is the fact that a couple of the other big manufactures of these type machines, the coin op phonograph and the coin op illustrated Song Machine used phono machines from the established makers. William Rosenfield in New York used both Columbia and Edison works in their extensive line, of which quite a few survive. Mills Novely Co in Chicago used Columbia works in their coin op phono and coin op Illustrated Song Machine, and being the biggest maker at the time, very few have survived. Maybe just a couple of each.
Rosenfield went on to making vacuum cleaners, the Mills Novelty Co made coin op machines such as slot machines and jukeboxes for many decades, and the Caille Brothers manufactured a long line of boating engines when their coin op business started going out of vogue.
Thanks for any knowledge and thoughts. I can be easily reached in Norwalk, Ohio ( minutes from Edison’s birthplace) if you would like to contact me direct. Tmorsher@icloud.com
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