Hi Martin & List;
My Father went to the working home for the blind at 36th and Lancaster Ave.
in Philly and secured a brand new machine.
You could smell the newness of the rubber cover over the turntable.
And, the smell of the various tubes and components.
The only thing I didn't like about them was that the tone arm was a little
heavy even by the standards at that time.
But, I remember the warmth that came out of the quarter inch earphone jack.
Incidentally, does anyone know who made those machines?
I use to play my Sinatra Dorsey mono RCA albums on that machine and they
sounded fantastic.
73 De Anthony W2AJV
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin McCormick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 3:51 PM
Subject: Re: IPOD
> Anthony Vece writes:
>> Do you remember the old TalkingBook machine that were or, looked very
>> similar to a Webcore machine?
>>
>> They were out in the early 60's.
>
> I've got to respond to this.
>
> I worked for the Oklahoma Library for the Blind in the
> seventies, the Summer of 71, 72, 73 and 2 years from 1974
> through Summer of 1976. I actually worked on a ton of those
> "black boxes" as they were called in 1971.
>
> It was actually kind of lucky for me because the state
> had this program where they would hire college students in the
> Summer to work for Visual Services which was the next larger
> scope in our state's Department of Human Services.
>
> Usually students were not terribly welcome, but we would
> do odd jobs in the vending stands or at the Library for the
> Blind.
>
> That usually meant checking Talking Books for damage,
> missing records and the occasional foreign object such as the
> hash pipe equipped with residue and or a swarm of cockroaches
> that some of the patrons mailed back to us on occasion.
>
> I didn't find either of those things, but I sure heard
> of them.
>
> I started out that first Summer typing addresses on form
> letters from a Dictaphone and it was bone-crushingly dull.
> Answering the phone was only slightly better because it was
> interesting to meet the various folks in our other Visual
> Services offices all over the state and the occasional client.
>
> Then, they found out I liked to do mechanical things and
> could solder, etc, and I spent the rest of the Summer in the
> Talking Book repair facility that Oklahoma has.
>
> The Summer of 1971, the Library of Congress was shipping
> out thousands of conversion kits to modify all those old
> machines to play the 8-and-1-third RPM disks.
>
> Those machines were built like army tanks. The amplifier
> was a metal chassis with 3 or 4 tubes, a power transformer and
> an audio matching transformer. They sounded pretty decent, which
> I am sure, some of you remember, and the new machines would
> always ship with a test disk recorded on 33-and-1-third on one
> side and 16-and-2-thirds on the other.
>
> What we had to do was remove the old turntable and
> motor and trash it, and then install this kit of new parts
> consisting of a new motor that ran at 1800 RPM instead of 3600
> RPM, the rubber drive wheel, and turntable.
>
> We would then connect the motor to the power leads and
> it was ready to have a second lease on life.
>
> I think you also had to drill out one new hole in the
> turntable board, but that was certainly no problem.
>
> That made for an interesting Summer.
>
> One thing the guy who worked there all year told me was
> about the time somebody who had a bit of a problem with the
> bottle sent in a machine in to which he had puked beer.
>
> The worst one of those old black boxes I ever saw was
> one that had been handled roughly in the mail. The nut and bolt
> that held one end of the audio transformer had shaken out and
> the transformer swung around on the remaining screw and smashed
> one of the tubes.
>
> The machine had a nice jingle to it with all that glass
> and, when I turned it on after repairing all the obvious damage,
> more glass spewed out from under the turntable as it would get
> caught between the motor shaft and drive wheel.
>
> Any how, those old machines were useful for a very long
> time. We also scavenged the amplifier chassis out of several of
> them and used them for parts and even once as a line driver
> amplifier in our radio reading service.
>
> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
> Systems Engineer
> OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
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