BAL-AMi Jukeboxes were manufactured in the UK from 1953 to 1962, by the Balfour (Marine) Engineering Company, mostly being derivatives of those made by the American AMi (Automatic Musical Instrument)
jukebox
A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that plays a user-selected song from a self-contained media library. Traditional jukeboxes contain records, compact discs, or digital files, and allow user ...
company.
History
In the years following
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, import restrictions were in place in the UK thus preventing many types of goods from being sold unless they had a certain percentage of locally manufactured content. One such example was the record playing jukebox, which were almost exclusively made in the United States at that time.
In order for any of these jukeboxes to be allowed to be sold in the UK, at least 53% of their content had to be manufactured locally. Recognising an opportunity, a London-based businessman, Sam Norman, engaged with John Haddock of the AMi jukebox corporation. An agreement was reached in 1953 for Norman's company, Balfour (Marine) Engineering, to manufacture AMi jukeboxes at the Balfour factory in
Ilford
Ilford is a large List of areas of London, town in East London, England, northeast of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Redbridge, Ilford is within the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Greater London. It had a po ...
,
Essex
Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...
, under licence from AMi.
During the following ten years Balfour produced jukeboxes which were mostly identical to their AMi counterparts, aside from their internal electrical systems and amplifiers. The electrics were to UK specifications, and the amplifiers were generally provided by Beam-Echo. From 1955 onwards, these jukeboxes were distributed under the name of BAL-AMi.
To address the needs of some smaller venues such as coffee bars, BAL-AMi also manufactured some machines unique to the UK and holding just twenty records (giving forty selections allowing for two sides per disc).
Models
End of Jukebox Production
Sam Norman died of
leukaemia
Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia; pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and produce high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or '' ...
in 1962, at the age of 47. BAL-AMi made their final model, the New Yorker, that same year. The Balfour company continued operations in other areas such as aircraft parts for the rest of the 1960s.
References
External links
BAL-AMi JukeboxesHome of the British-made BAL-AMi jukeboxes
BAL-AMI
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bal-Ami Jukeboxes
Jukeboxes