The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I stumbled across this advert and few pictures of tokens. The advert is from 1913 and I wonder what machines would be used with those headphones back then.

The advertisement pictured appears to be East European, but the original Pathé Salon du Phonographe was on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris.

The customer bought their tokens and sat next to a cabinet with a catalogue, a coin slot, a dial and a pair of listening tubes. They put the token in the slot, dialled the catalogue number of their choice and put on the listening tubes. In the basement an employee would select the required cylinder and put it on a machine connected to the listening tubes.

You have dated the advertisement to 1913, by which time Pathé had long since ceased retailing cylinders, but they may still have been using them in their salons, as they continued recording on master cylinders for dubbing onto their vertically cut discs for many years.

Note how the photographer has carefully placed two attractive ladies in the foreground of the picture. Very French!

This sal was placed in Łódź, my home city. The date comes from a website which also had showed the history of businesses located in this building. I also thought that cylinders would not be used by that point, even more so because cylinders weren't that popular here (back than Imperial Russia)

Who says the recordings had to be on cylinders throughout the whole life of the salons? Just as easy to connect disc machines to the ear tubes.

Yes, but disc phonographs are incredibly loud, usually.

The pictures suggest these are telephone earphones with wires not listening tubes.

This would let the playback room be at a distance from the salon.
the method of pickup from the probable disc machines might be as simple as a telephone microphone connected with a tube rather than having a horn.

The volume of sound reaching the ear would be reasonable ( not too loud ) if this is the case and the playback room need not be in the cellar below the salon.(I think the Paris one was laid out like that)
The compromise of reduced quality with a microphone vs. long tubes that reduce the top frequencies after a few yards was probably acceptable.

The same type of earphone listening system was used in London at the same time , called the electrophone system where telephone microphones were installed in theatres and churches to listen in at home for a fee. I think Budapest had a similar system

Further research has identified the photo as being from a "Prospectus Pathé de 1900" with the following inscription :

"La salle d'audition permettait aux visiteurs du Salon du Phonographe d'ecouter les cylindres de leur choix."