* Some assembly required.
I saw this amazing little device on the TV show “Pawn Stars” the other day, and it captured my imagination. This little device is a portable record player. It played full-sized 78-rpm records, and was powered entirely by a spring crank. The sound quality, as they demonstrated on the TV show, was terrible, but that was beside the point at the time. Now, for the first time ever, you could take music with you. A romantic picnic in the park, or a leisurely day at the beach (which, if we believe the media of the time, was all anyone did in the 1920′s and 30′s) no longer had to be occupied with the tedious trappings of conversation! Now, you could bring along some music and enjoy a bit of entertainment while you avoided talking to each other! This was the first example of the inter-gender interactions with which we are so familiar today! Think about it: portable music, poor sound quality from the built-in speaker, and the ability to distract from any conversation at hand? Why, this is the predecessor to the iPhone!
My parents bought one of these in the 80's at an antique shop and they still have it.. It still works, though it appears to have not led such an easy life as the one in the picture. I am sure that, unlike today's portable music players, the hardware back then was much more durable than the media.
Sound quality sucks by today's standards, but isn't all that bad compared to a full-sized Victrola. Don't forget these were entirely mechanical, with no amplification and no way to adjust the violume other than muffling it or changing the horn, and they played 78's from the days before hi-fi.
While this player appears well built and durable, I would hesitate to bring 78 disks to the great outdoors: they are extremely brittle! I'm also skeptical of bringing such a mechanical device somewhere covered in sand. I guess there are beaches with rocks, but who goes to these?
Looks a lot like Maxwell Smart's shoe phone.
<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WsE6M_RjBIY/TDKe4bDsfSI/AAAAAAAAbS8/L_9OnPCx67I/s1600/get_smart_shoe_phone.jpg"width=500>
Funny you mention that, as I'm currently
downloadingtotally legitimately purchasing the whole series of Get Smart. I miss that show, and now that I see it's been digitally remastered, I can't wait to watch it again.Most technology can be improved by the judicious application of leather. I think there's law for that somewhere.