»The coin operated Scopitone juke box was invented and manufactured in Paris, France after World War II by Cameca and later in Chicago in the USA. The juke box showed low budget movie clips along with the music of the time featuring popular musicians of the sixties, such as Neil Sedaka, Nancy Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. It has a facility for moving pictures as well as sound reproduction and is essentially electro-mechanical. In the front there are eighteen filmclips listed in its play selection. Scopitones were exported widely and were enjoyed by many at leisure in cafes, hotels and milk bars. However the complexity of the machinery, the expense of servicing them and the free entertainment value of home television contributed to their demise around 1967.«
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Scopitones are the early 1960s precursors to today's music videos. They were distributed on color 16mm film with a magnetic soundtrack, and were made to be shown on a Scopitone film jukebox. The first Scopitones were made in France around 1960, and the Scopitone craze spread throughout Europe (particularly in West Germany and England) before crossing the Atlantic to the United States in mid-1964. By the end of the 1960s, they were gone. [ Scopitone Catalog ]

More stories and links: The Jukebox that ate the Cocktail Lounge of Scopitone, Bruce Sterling's The Dead media Project, musique-mecanique [via IT&W, December 24., 2001, fw]