[crashryan]

It would be interesting to have a collection of home recordings people made with devices like the one on page 3. Does anyone know of such an archive?

Link to the book: Joe Palooka Comics 110

[Captain Audio]

I don't think that device records. It uses 8mm films of TV episodes.

I had a similar device when I was a kid that projected short 8mm clips of various sci fi and monster movies.

In the 70's or early 80's a kids level video taping system was available. It used its own camera to record video on regular audio cassette tapes. A friend bought a set for his kids.
There are collectors who still use these. The rather grainy images have a spooky artistic flair to them. They are good for mimicking night vision images.

[The Australian Panther]

8mm was quite a thing for a while there in the late 70s. You could buy a version of a movie in 8mm - edited down to 3 or 4 5 minute reels. A friend once showed me his 8mm copy of Star Wars. So bad it was hilarious.

cheers!   

[crashryan]

No, the Electric Home Recorder was one of a raft of home disc-recording devices dating back to the early days of phonographs. By this time the technology was reaching an end as tape recording caught on, but during the 30s and 40s there was quite a market for do-it-yourself recorders. During WWII families and GI's would exchange audio "letters" on disc. I have one my father sent my mother, a six-inch disc that runs about two minutes. This one was recorded on higher-end equipment at a record store, Many record shops installed recording booths. Customers would buy a blank disc and cut a record on the spot (and hopefully buy a few commercial recordings while they were there).

Cheap home disc recorders like this one typically consisted of an extra arm which mounted to an existing record player. The arm was connected either electrically or acoustically to a microphone. You slapped a blank onto the turntable and as you spoke the arm's cutting head carved out the grooves. I've never seen one of these gadgets in action. I imagine reproduction quality was low. Some of the cheapest models had you shouting into a sort of megaphone on the cutter arm, just like in the cylinder days.

[Captain Audio]

The device on page three of Joe Palooka is a TV shaped back projector. The images are projected on the inside of a translucent screen. No recording function. We must be looking at entirely different links.

The wife of a friend has a complete WW2 wire recording and record disc recorder that belonged to her father who was an Airforce Chaplin stationed in Britain.
Very retro styling with heavy rosewood cabinet. It had a full range radio receiver, and possibly a transmitter. The microphone would be more at home on Ming the Mercilous space cruiser.
There are several large drums of the recording wire stored inside. She was hoping I knew how to get the outfit working again. Unfortunately the wiring is some pre WW2 british type with a plug in unlike any I've seen. I would not try to hook it up to 130 volt AC on a bet. Probably burn out instantly.

There might be valuable recordings still viable in those drums, perhaps wartime broadcasts or servicemens messages , the phonograph discs long destroyed by age.

[crashryan]

Yes, the miscommunication seems to have arisen by my typing page 3 (File page 3, that is) instead of page 2.

Our high school science club found an old Webster-Chicago portable wire recorder stuck away in a cabinet. It was a beauty. Weighed about 900 pounds, with a solid wood case, Deco-y metal faceplate, and Bakelite knobs. The heavy triangular mike was made of steel, as near as I could tell. The machine recorded and played back perfectly. There were several spools of wire with it. One was the play-by-play of a high school football game. I remember being surprised how good the fidelity was, though I imagine it wouldn't be much by today's standards. It looked like this:



It's funny that one other thing I remember about the unit is its smell. There was a particular aroma, not an unpleasant one, about the case and the removable top. Years later I was poking around the insides of a 1940s radio-phonograph at an antique store when the same smell hit me. It was one of those cool moments when for an instant you jump back in time and re-experience the sights and sounds of days gone by. I'm guessing that the "Webcor smell" had something to do with a combination of wood and fabric that the recorder shared with the phonograph.

I have the disassembled remains of a small console radio-phono-wire recorder in the Garage of Doom. I'd always hoped some day to put it together and get it to work. One odd feature is that the transport for the wire recorder is built into the turntable base. The supply spool clips onto its shaft here. The take-up reel is permanently attached to the bottom of the turntable and is the same diameter. It seems like the turntable motor must drive the wire mechanism. Does it have a transmission of some kind that switches between disc player and wire recorder mode? I can't tell.