A hundred years ago tonight on the radio, you could listen to the California Ramblers performing over WEAF, New York. But it wasn’t just any broadcast, as seen from the clipping above, from the January 1923 issue of Talking Machine World. Due to the radio. Columbia records noted that the lid of many a long forgotten phonograph had been frozen. They fought back with radio, and purchased time on WEAF every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:15. Each broadcast featured a Columbia recording artist, and was broadcast right from the recording studio. If people liked what they heard, they could buy a record, enabling them to listen to it whenever they liked.
According to Columbia, listeners around the country had tuned in. The group is shown here, in 1931, in the June 1931 issue of What’s On The Air. You can hear them in their 1925 recording of “Five Foot Two Eyes of Blue”, below.
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This illustration from the November 1923 issue of Science and Invention fits squarely into the category of very interesting things that never caught on for want of a practical application.
It is a system for showing motion pictures from your phonograph. The phonograph is busy spinning at 78 RPM, and this system allows you to use that phenomenon to project movies. The frames of your movie are printed on the edge of a paper disk which is placed on the platter, just like a phonograph record. Two bright lights shine on the image, and the opaque image is projected through a prism onto the screen.
A single disk will give you a movie of about 1/78 of a minute long. To provide for longer movies, the disk bends up automatically as it passes under the prism, which allows the layer below to be shown.
The magazine refers to it only as the “Jenkins movie machine.” That is probably a reference to Charles Francis Jenkins (1867-1934), a pioneer of early cinema. He went on to television, as the principal of W3XK, the first television station in the United States, which began broadcasts to the general public in 1928.
Eighty years ago, wartime parts shortages meant you couldn’t just walk into the store and buy parts for your radio or phonograph. Occasionally, substitutions were necessary, and they sometimes required a bit of ingenuity to make them work.
Such was the case for one John J. Leap of New York City, who sent this idea in to the publishers of Radio Craft, where it was published in the November 1943 issue. The pickup on his phonograph had gone bad, and the replacement was unobtainium. Therefore, he made his own, using a headphone and the reproducer from an old mechanical phonograph.
The stylus was soldered to the diaphragm of the headphone, which was used in the place of the original mica piece in the reproducer. The combined unit was then mounted to the original tone arm.
The editors of the magazine decided to duplicate the idea, and they found it to give good results both in quality and volume.
Seventy years ago, America’s youth knew how to make a party click, thanks to the spin of a record, the cut of a caper, and, of course, a bottle of Coke.
This ad appeared in the September 1953 issue of Boys’ Life.
Seventy years ago, this young man is enlivening the family picnic by trying his voice on the mike of this project from the July 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics. The project is billed as a “just for fun” audio amplifier, but it’s actually quite a bit more. In addition to the two-tube battery operated audio amplifier, the project contains provisions for a crystal microphone and phonograph input from a spring-wound record player. It’s not an early prototype karaoke machine, because you can use only one at a time. But the magazine notes that it’s a lot of fun in a group for everyone to try their voice on the mike. It notes that almost everyone talks too fast, some get mike fright, and others use an unnaturally high pitch. It noted that placing the mike was an art, and the set provides a good opportunity to learn a lot about PA systems.
And in addition, the circuit included a built-in germanium diode crystal set which would pull in clear signals from local stations.
Disclaimer: Don’t get fitness advice from random bloggers, talk to your doctor before starting any exercise program, and please don’t sue us if you get hurt exercising.
We previously wrote about Walter Camp’s Daily Dozen, an exercise regimen devised and promoted by Walter Camp, American football player and coach. When the U.S. Army discovered that many conscripts in World War I were badly out of shape, it turned to Camp to come up with an exercise program for sedentary city boys. He came up with the “Daily Dozen,” a series of twelve simple exercises that could be performed in about twenty minutes. Camp also recommended an hour of outdoor play, but the Daily Dozen were seen as a method of getting ready for the day. Camp had observed zoo animals who, like office workers, were unnaturally confined, and his exercises mimicked some of the stretches he had seen these animals instinctively perform.
I recently suffered a broken arm, and as a result, was sent to physical therapy to get the function back. They gave me exercises to do, and as an old out-of-shape sedentary person, I did get in the habit of exercising. When my physical therapy ended, I decided that I ought to take some small step to remain active. And since I had written about an exercise program, I figured that one was as good as any.
As we previously wrote, Camp produced a set of records with his exercises. While a band plays, Camp barks out his instructions, and you exercise along with the record player. Undoubtedly, Camp was standing next to the band as it played, shouting his commands into the cone of the recording equipment. So a few months ago, I decided to start doing the Daily Dozen. Human physiology hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years, and if Camp could make people more fit in 1922, there’s no reason why he can’t do the same thing today.
Even though the exercises are very simple, the 20 minute routine does seem to have a positive effect on my health. For one thing, it has gotten easier after a few months. At first, it wasn’t exactly hard, but it did seem like drudgery. But as time goes by, the routine goes quickly, and quite easy. I do feel more energetic after doing it. And more importantly, I’ve noticed that if I miss doing it for one day, I don’t really feel as well the next day. So it doesn’t do any harm, and it’s probably a benefit. I also try to take Camp’s advice and do some outdoor recreation every day.
If you want to give it a try, Camp’s 1922 record set is available on YouTube:
If you want to see the exercises being done, you can see them in this video. You can find a modern-day discussion and critique in this book at Amazon. You can also find Camp’s own book at this link at Google Books. You’ll notice that the exercises in the videos and books are somewhat different, as the plan changed a bit over the years. I’ve been following the plan from the 1922 record set.
If you’re looking for a modest exercise program to start getting yourself back into some semblance of physical fitness, then you can’t really go wrong with the Daily Dozen.
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Seventy years ago, this high fidelity salesperson didn’t need to work hard to make a sale. The equipment practically sold itself, thanks to the “Audiomat” from Asco Sound Corporation. It would accommodate up to ten tuners, twenty amplifiers, and twenty speakers, all of which could be compactly mounted. Then, at a touch of the button, the salesperson would seamlessly switch from one to the other.
To allow the customer to hear how the equipment would sound at home, the store would have a separate den-sized listening room, with a smaller version of the Audiomat. From there, the customer could make the final decision of what equipment would best suit their needs.
The picture and accompanying article are from the May 1953 issue of Radio News.
Fifty years ago this month, the April 1973 issue of Popular Mechanics highlighted the many miniature cassette recorders then on the market. Like their slightly older brethren like the one at the rear, all of these played standard sized cassettes. Even smaller models were available using smaller tapes, but the magazine noted that those were often hard to find, so it featured only the models using full sized cassettes.
Weight of all of these recorders were between one and two pounds. The playback sound was said to be limited, mostly because of the small speaker and underpowered amplifier. But the magazine noted that a recording made on one of the small units, when played back on the good player at home, sounded surprisingly good.
This couple are getting ready to enjoy listening to a record on the Philco model 1401 radio-phonograph, which, according to the ad, played records by magic. You didn’t need to lift the lid, nor even look at the tone arm. You just inserted the record into the front, and it played automatically.
This ad appeared in Life magazine 75 years ago today, April 12, 1948. You can see a nicely restored specimen at this video:
Shown here is a design that never really caught on, although it appears that there are a few purists who still cling to it. This is the parallel tracking turntable, also known as linear tracking. The advantage is said to be less wear and tear on your records, since the outer half of the groove doesn’t need to do the extra work of pushing the tone arm.
This illustration appeared on the cover of the British Popular Wireless, March 1963, and the accompanying article showed how to build it. If you don’t want to go to that trouble, and you’re an audiophile purist, you can purchase this one. One thing we can say for sure is that the advantage of such a turntable is even greater than oxygen-free speaker wire.
A hundred years ago tonight on the radio, you could listen to the California Ramblers performing over WEAF, New York. But it wasn’t just any broadcast, as seen from the clipping above, from the January 1923 issue of Talking Machine World. Due to the radio. Columbia records noted that the lid of many a long forgotten phonograph had been frozen. They fought back with radio, and purchased time on WEAF every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:15. Each broadcast featured a Columbia recording artist, and was broadcast right from the recording studio. If people liked what they heard, they could buy a record, enabling them to listen to it whenever they liked.
