Located at 303 Sutter, the Palais Royale Saloon was a gin mill. Built to look like the Louvre, it was a large structure shaped in a U. It would have been long forgotten as one of the many saloons in the Barbary Coast^[1]except that, in 1889, it debuted the world’s first jukebox.

Thomas Edison unveiled his invention of the phonograph in 1877. Pacific Phonograph Company in San Francisco replicated the technology. Being too expensive for the average citizen, Louis Glass and William Arnold from PPC created a device that allowed the public to pay to hear a single recording. The “Nickel-In-The-Slot Player”, later shortened to the “nickelodeon”, was a coin-operated Edison electric phonograph fitted in a wood cabinet with four stethoscope-looking tubes for listening. The record was changed out every day. PPC debuted their device at the Palais Royale Saloon, located two blocks away. It was an immediate sensation, and generated $1,000 in six months. Ironically, the saloon would shut down a year later. The building would be destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fires^[2].

In 1934, Wurlitzer would create a more modern version of this device, which was called a jukebox. These devices were fit with carousels that provided a large selection of records. 

^[1] Barbary Coast: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3823 

^[2] San Francisco Earthquake and Fires: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2849