 September sees the start of the annual Staffordshire History Festival – Staffordshire Library and Arts’ and Archive and Heritage’s two-month celebration of our local history and cultural heritage in Staffordshire and beyond. This year because of the continuing situation with Covid-19 the festival will be taking place mostly online, but there will be some physical activities taking place as well.
Keep in touch with forthcoming events through our Facebook page and via Twitter - just type in the hashtag #StaffsHistFest to see what’s going on. There will be special editions of the Newsletter with details of our events including the Victoria County History Study Day which will take place online on 30 October, the launch of our new interactive online exhibition 'Meaningful Mementoes' and the launch of our 'pop-up' touring exhibition 'A Case for the Ordinary: Staffordshire’s Asylums and the Patient Experience'.
 (D4721/K/1/4/30)
The 1890s Jukebox
From the advertising material in the George Salter & Co collection at Staffordshire Record Office comes this intriguing advert – the Victorian answer to the jukebox! Called the ‘Symphonion-Orchestrion’, it was effectively a large music box, with added bells (literally). Invented in Germany in 1885, it was based on the principle of a cylinder music box, where a revolving drum ‘pings’ a tiny metal musical comb to produce notes.
In the Symphonion-Orchestrion, the rotating cylinder was replaced with a large metal disc (which you can see in the upper part of the instrument). Again, a metallic musical comb produced the main tune, whilst an additional bank of bells (resembling round alarm bells) would provide accompaniment. Both comb and bells would be triggered by punched holes in the metal disc passing by as it made one complete revolution.
Not only were these discs cheaper to produce they could also be changed very easily, meaning that the latest hit song could be mass produced almost overnight. Like jukeboxes, large machines such as the one advertised here were intended for public venues and could be operated by inserting a penny. Unlike jukeboxes, of course, you only had the choice of whatever song happened to be on the metal disc at the time!
Celebrate the Staffordshire History Festival with the Library Service
A virtual programme of informative posts, quizzes, interesting videos, live online events, crafts and activities for children and families will be shared on social media across the two months of the festival, many produced by our staff, volunteers and local partner organisations. There will be regular posts to highlight famous people from Staffordshire and little known facts about Staffordshire’s history.
There will also be history eBook, eAudio and eMagazine recommendations for titles that can be borrowed from the eLibrary – look out for recommended reading on all kinds of history stock from local history, The Second World War and Black History Month to historical novels, history for children and much more! Visit your local library or our eLibrary to find out what we have to offer: www.staffordshire.gov.uk/eLibrary
We’ll be showcasing local history authors throughout the festival. Find out about their books and the Staffordshire stories and history that inspired them. We will also be highlighting local projects, including the Women’s Land Army in the Moorlands project, the Archaeology in Mind excavations of RAF Perton and Tamworth Castle’s Saxon Camp.
We are delighted to be working again with talented director/producer Jason Young to bring you a Black History Month themed programme of animated films and audio dramas, every Friday at 7pm, in October. The programme begins on 1st October with ‘Cato Street to Newgate’ A story of love, politics and frustrated ambition and the attempted assassination of the Prime Minister in 1820. This is followed a week later by animated short ‘Tunstall’, the story of Samuel Barber, the first black British preacher in primitive methodism, in Staffordshire. The season also explores ‘The Horrors of Slavery’ in an experimental animation. The final two films explore the life of ‘The Chartist’ William Cuffay and ‘William Sharpe’, leader of the 1831 Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica. On Saturday 30th October at 1pm we also have a radio drama, ‘The History of Mary Prince’, the story of first black woman, an abolitionist, to publish an account of her life in Britain.
The Ancestry Library Edition website will be available for Library members to access at home together with the fantastic online newspaper resource NewsBank, with some newspapers dating back to the 1980s.
Library members and Archives visitors also have free access on library computers to Ancestry Library Edition, Find My Past and NewsBank. For more information about how to access a PC in our libraries please visit: www.staffordshire.gov.uk/Libraries/Coronavirus-update-for-libraries.aspx
 Join us in The Learning Room to discover a range of articles based on research and collections across the Archives and Heritage Service. You can sign up here
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