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The oldest DJ set-up in the world, 1910
06.26.2012
02:10 pm
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The Gaumont Chronophone System was the world’s first-ever mixer and cross-fader.

In 1910 Gaumont demonstrated his Chronophone system, which synchronised sound and film, at the Gaumont Palace in Paris. The compressed-air amplifier, whiuch he called the Eglephone, was just a part of the whole system. The volume was enough for an audience of 4000. Initially the longest moving picture that could be made with synchronised sound was only 200ft, due to the limited playing time of the Gramophone record. (Projection was at 16 frames per second) Gaumont surmounted this problem by having two gramophone platters; a deft operator could switch between them to give a more or less continuous soundtrack.

 
Read more about it at The Auxetophone.
 
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Via Mururoar

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.26.2012
02:10 pm
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1950 GE Play-Talk Turntable Tape Recorder

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From Pea Hicks, The king of the Optigan.

This is a GE Play-Talk from 1950. It’s a kid’s toy, but it’s actually pretty advanced for the time, since tape recorders were just starting to become available. This is a tape recorder / record player hybrid. The paper disc is coated with magnetic tape and the tonearm has a tape recorder head on it. The little plastic disc that goes over the “tape” disc has a spiral groove for guiding the tonearm. The speaker serves double duty as the microphone. All tube electronics.

What’s great is the way you can play/record in random access mode. There’s no erase head, so the sounds just keep building on top of each other until you erase the disc with a bulk tape eraser.

In the 2nd part of the video, I use another fantastic GE toy- the Tote-A-Tune keyboard from the early 70s. I record a scale onto the disc, then attempt to play a tune by manually moving the tonearm over the disc. Lots of creative lo-fi applications for this sucker!!

Posted by Brad Laner
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12.15.2009
06:31 pm
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