E. Amet Cylinder Phonograph - Chicago, IL

[Starkton]

Could somebody give me a brief history/synopsis of these Amet phonos? What makes them so rare and expensive?

Edward Hill Amet was the first in the U.S. to introduce a motor case with a working single-spring motor for both phonograph and graphophone upper works in 1894. He constructed the first phonograph motor to use ball bearings. His single-spring model with a sales price of, as far as I recall, $40, was no success. It played only one cylinder with one winding. In addition, the speed and power rapidly diminished as the spring ran down. Amet's motor cases are easy to identify by a flip-down, key-lock door and nickled bed-plate. In 1895, Amet introduced a double-spring motor at $85, which was the model recently auctioned.

[phonogfp]

Amet's motor cases are easy to identify by a flip-down, key-lock door and nickled bed-plate.

Also - American Graphophone/Columbia offered spring motors in similar cases with flip-down doors (but no locks), and nickeled bedplates. We showed this Macdonald Graphophone motor for converting Class Ms, along with several variants of Amet motors in The Talking Machine Compendium, which I just realized came out exactly 15 years ago! Egad - I'm old!

Not shown in these scans is a 4-spring Amet motor driving a Bell-Tainter derived coin-op.

George P.