nickelodeon

Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon. All I want is having you and music, music, music!
If you’re expecting me to wax nostalgic about 1990’s television, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

But it sure is a cool-sounding word, isn’t it?

I realized today that almost all I knew about nickelodeons in the original sense (besides the preceding song lyrics) was that in the obscure independent sleeper hit Titanic, Jack kisses Rose’s hand and says:

I saw that in a nickelodeon once, and I always wanted to try it.
I was confused about how this related to the words of "Music! Music! Music!" --a song I could only have remembered from my sister's childood dance recitals (and whose title I found through a lucky Google search). The words reminded me of the player pianos they have in kitschy gift shops in Branson, Missouri.

I personally think those pianos are pretty neat-o, but they don't play movies.

So I looked it up.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a nickelodeon is:

1. A theatre or cinema with an admission fee of one nickel. [1888]
2. A jukebox. [1938]¹

At the turn of the century, a nickelodeon was a theatre where one could watch a series of short silent films for five cents.²


These existed throughout Europe at the time, but it is useful to note that the name “nickelodeon” was originally specific to US theatres, the nickel referring to the American currency (The Oxford English Dictionary even goes so far to specify a single theatre opened in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania by Harry Davis and John Harris in 1905).¹

---

Nickel was a word for a demon in German, a pet form of the name Nicholaus. The reason for this name choice, frustratingly, is unclear.³ What is clear is that to German copper miners, nickel ore looked very much like copper ore. Understandably, however, it was impossible to smelt copper from nickel ore, so they gave it the nickname kupfernickel, or “copper demon” for its aggravations.⁴

---

The -odeon in Nickelodeon is derivative of French odéum, from Latin odium, from Greek ὦδείου, meaning a small music hall (itself from Greek ὦδε, meaning "song").⁵

In the nicer nickelodeons, the short flicks would be accompanied by music an organist in the theatre played to suit the plot, hence the musical connotation.²

By the 1930’s, after modern cinema had completely replaced the antiquated short nickel-flick format, the word had been appropriated to apply to early jukeboxes and player pianos. A nickel wouldn’t buy you a movie, anymore, but at least it could still buy you a song.¹

I guess Viacom was like me and just enjoyed the sound of the word when they renamed Pinwheel to "Nickelodeon, the first channel just for kids" in 1981⁶, eventually airing shows like, oh...

...how about Nick Arcade?

--that's some high-quality nostaligia.

---

¹"nickelodeon." Oxford English Dictionary. 2007. Oxford University Press. 20 April 2009. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00324270.
²"nickelodeon (movie theater)." Wikipedia. 2009. 20 April 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_(movie_theater).
³”nickel”. Online Etymology Dictionary. 20 April 2009. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nickel
⁴"Copper Demon" Venetskill, S & Popoya, L. Metallurgist. Springer New York. 20 April 2009. http://www.springerlink.com/content/k01143v31v385274/.
⁵"odeon." Stormonth, James. Etymological and Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. 1879. p 398. 20 April 2009. http://books.google.com/books?id=J2kCAAAAQAAJ
⁶"Nickelodeon (TV network)." Wikipedia. 2009. Oxford University Press. 12 April 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_(TV_channel).