[78-L] Dual purpose machine...

[Bob Rice]

  Wire Recorder? Remember the "Tele-Magnet" I THINK it was called? Answering 
machine? As big as a suitcase your Big Old Black Bell Telephone, which EVERY 
home had back in the 50'sWould be put on this beast, when the fone rang the 
thing after 4 rings the turntable with a record on it would start, It played 
into a speaker right under the voice enf of the handset,which was lifted up 
enough to pick up the fone, It wouuld give the Pre Recorded message, from 
the record, pause and IF you spoke the Wire Recorder would record what you 
said, and shut down when YOU did. It could hold a buncha messages on the 
Wilcox gay Real of wire.Of COURSE the wire broke and I just "Spliced" it 
together , by tying a knot in it! Strands of this fine wire would get 
EVERYwhere! A fun to me, in my deformative years was to wrap a few turns of 
it around regular 120 volt plugs, and leave them unplugged. Anybody would 
see"Oh, it's unplugged!" and plug the devise in with a wonderful FLASH!Ha 
Ha! Like my sister's radio, or lamp!Of course the wire was vaporized! A big 
blue flash ensuid, vaporising all evidences of a wire! Great fun! The Tele 
Masgnet had a mike, too, so you could make recordings on the wire reeel. 
Lots of fun, I took it apart and made a plain wire recorder out of it! Gees! 
A machine that takes and makes music when you listen?In 1953 it was a hoot! 
We had hours of fun, doing sounnd effects and skits! THEN the Big Box Webcor 
TAPE recorders started appearing, you could set a mike in front of yur 
Philco radio and capture songs you liked, for Free!"QUIET!" I'm recording 
was the norm!Setting the mike by a tin waste basket and dropping a few rocks 
in, for a Skit-type Plane Crash!Piece of cardboard stuck in a running 
electric fan for a prop plane sound! Lottsa fun! Oh the memories?

   Bob
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert M. Bratcher Jr." <bratcher at pdq.net>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 11:34 PM
Subject: Re: [78-L] Dual purpose machine...


> At 08:52 PM 1/12/2010, you wrote:
>>The video of the combination wire recorder and record player is 
>>interesting.
>>I never owned one of these, but recall seeing one advertised in the Sears,
>>Roebuck catalog, about 1947 or 1948, or?
>>I worked in a radio/appliance store in 1947.  The boss bought the first 
>>wire
>>recorder in town, and later the school bought one.  Since I was the
>>designated recording engineer, the band director asked me to record one of
>>their concerts.  The band had played a few minutes of the Chaikovskii
>>symphony no. 5, and the wire broke.  Did you ever try to tie a square knot
>>in a piece of wire about the diameter of a piece of human hair?  I finally
>>gave up and suggested to the band director that we go back to using our
>>Wilcox-Gay Recordio and make discs.
>>
>>Ted Kneebone. 1528 S. Grant St., Aberdeen, SD 57401. Phone: 605-226-3344.
>>Old Time Radio: http://abe.midco.net/tkneebone3
>
> So did he let you go back to making discs? If so then where are they
> now? Or did you keep recording on wire from then on? Might be nice to
> hear some of those old recordings if the school orchestra was any good.
>
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