Rare belgian early 50's Barco ‘Jukebox’

The Richelieu Barcobox is built in a walnut cabinet with stylish finish and comprises a Philips AG1000 pick-up and a companymade Barco radio console. The radio part has 4 frequency wave bands.

The amplification of the unit with its push-pull power amplifier is built by Douglas and has a 10 inch speaker inside.

A separate mobile Barco/Douglas loudspeaker is included and can be amplified from within the Barcobox.

The Richelieu was merely manufactured for professional use in bars and restaurants and was the answer to the growing demand for commercial audio consoles and jukeboxes.

Barco history

Nowadays Belgian electronics company Barco is worldwide known as a manufacturer of professional projection gear for the event and medical industry. World player as we speak, the company has already a history of almost 90 years of manufacturing electronic equipment, starting back in 1933.

Barco founder Lucien De Puydt came from a family of coppersmiths. Since 1831, the copper butchery De Puydt was located in the center of Poperinge (Belgium). Lucien was far more interested in technology and he enrolled in evening classes in radio technology, an upcoming thing at the time. The first radio sets were sold by Lucien De Puydt while he helped in his father's business during his studies. What started very modestly in 1920, would become an important activity for the store from 1923. He sold radios from all leading German, Dutch and Belgian brands: Saba, Philips, Neutrodyne, Orthodyne, Sicer, Telefunken and Nora.

Thanks to his technical know-how, Lucien managed to follow the recent technological developments with his first modest assembly. After a few years of limited own assembly, he ventured into a larger production of his own brand "Stellavox", with a self-adapted chassis. The brand name bore echoes of the former private label of alarm clocks "De Ster" from his father’s business.

Together with his father, with whom he still shared the shop in Poperinge, Lucien De Puydt founded the company Belgian American Radio Corporation (BARCO). The start of Barco immediately meant the end of those private labels.

In the 40’s they successfully made the change to TV technology and launched the first TV prototypes before other belgian manufacturers. Beside their launch of TV’s Barco started also to diversify by producing their own jukeboxes. The inventiveness of their technicians lead to the creation of the Barcobox. The success was huge and Barco had to cope with imitations on a major scale. From the 60’s up to now Barco mainly focusses on their multi standard television sets, displays and projection systems.