"Podcast" Records Played with a Spinning Stylus - Plus Dial-A-Story!

Before Podcasts and iPod, there were Vinyl-Pods! Tiny records containing short stories and information. The records did not move and were played with a rotating stylus. This video covers 5 players! All restored by me.
Link to Dan O'Connor's video:
• 1979 Microphonograph P...
Link to an audio capture device used in this video:
amzn.to/3pDiuq7
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[@channelwoodgrange]

"I paid way too much for a record-card.... THEN I TOOK THE SCISSORS TO IT!!!!"

[@hteekay]

It sounds surprisingly cleaner than I thought it will

[@C.I...]

I expected massive distortion and wow/flutter, but the first player sounds pretty good! Okay maybe the beep was a bit warbly. The fisher price one sounds as expected though.

[@willd6215]

The way a record works still amazes me, the tech is really neat but the real hero is the human ear and brain to take those air waves and translate them into recognisable sound

[@HainjeDAF]

A dutch printer named Oosthoek gave out books with records.in them, called Sonoboek. Records were 8cm in diameter and stationary on 4-record plastic pages in the books. Records were played like in the Fischer Price books by placing the player on top.

[@DanOConnorTech]

These are fun aren't they? I appreciate the shout-out!

[@databits]

You're welcome!!!

[@irtbmtind89]

I remember playing with the dial-a-story books in daycare when I was really really little. It would be interesting to see the inside of one, I'm guessing there's a primitive horn in there too and it's essentially a 1930s portable gramophone without the clockwork motor. And the talking sportscards would actually be pretty cool when there was no internet and you couldn't just access interviews with players on demand.

[@Trance88]

I was born in 1988 and the "Comes To Life" series of books from the early 90's is a total mystery to me! I've never seen a system like this before. All the books I've ever seen and had that had accompanying sounds were either on cassette or had an electronic keypad thing on the side with a speaker.

[@5roundsrapid263]

6:53 sounds very similar to a See N’ Say, which I think had a record inside. It was also made by Fisher-Price. They probably based this on it.

[@Thomas-im6ft]

Had the Fisher Frice one. The one page had a stuck groove.

[@wintersbattleofbands1144]

Pin = spindle. This is really cool. Some more nomenclature: More correctly, the whole cartridge spins. The stylus is on the cartridge.

[@tymz-r-achangin]

I was born in the early 70's. I remember the records that came on cereal boxes but this is the first time I have seen the records and players in this video. Thanks for sharing!

[@speedycounihan]

I am fairly certain that I had that exact Berenstain bears comes to life book and player when I was a kid.

[@VincentVader]

I remember the Fisher Price talk to me books. My cousin had a few.

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

I'm currently working on 2 Talk to Me players for a friend. Where do I get the right belts? My friend paid $10 for 1 belt and it was too small. Aside from a speed adjustment, I'm trying to make sure it shuts off at the end. Challenge: make a regulated speed motor to spin those talking book players.

[@ndiamone9136]

Russell Industries took over for PRB (Projector-Recorder Belt Company). If you buy the small belt kit on eBay for a few dollars, there's always two or three in there that are just right.

[@databits]

Yes, look on ebay and search for "Mixed Square Cassette Tape Machine Recorder Rubber Belt For Repair Maintenance".

[@999troglodyte]

Got a Microsonics player in box on eBay a few years ago. Similar to Audubon player but apparently for Pepsi sales convention give-away. Sales pitches and a couples of commercial jingles from early 80s that it took some searching to find on youtube.

[@ladymunch0]

Thank you for uploading this awesome video. I love hearing about old audio formats etc so this is right up my street.

[@databits]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@VideoHuman1]

I have another collection using a spinning stylus. It is the Bertelsmann encyclopedia consisting of eleven hard backs. There special foils are inserted between the pages which contain six records each. A player is carefully positioned and plays up to 4 minutesabd 30 seconds each.

[@Musicradio77Network]

I remember Sportstalk. I used to have it when I first got it for Christmas back in 1988 and it was great. I used to have the “Series 1” demo card along with Hank Arron which was narrated by the late Mel Allen from “This Week in Baseball”, along with Do Mattingly with interview and hosted by Don Drystale. I missed those days. You know who made this? You guessed it! LJN!!! Yep! the AVGN approved it that it was LJN, the same company that made a boatload of bad licensed based NES games. You’re missing a clip at 17:09 where it has the final call of the game where the New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds back in 1951, and it was considered as “The Shots Heard Around The World”. I wish I can hear the whole thing. BTW, I found this one, and here it is in its entirety. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKqWkHmbg7xkjKM

[@Vokabre]

(This video should've been sponsored by audible)

[@gameoverwehaveeverypixelco1258]

Ever heard of a high density cd. I have one, I think it's a prototype, won't play in anything. Says it's 5.5x density. Says first high density cd according to the philips-sony standard produced with the standard cd production equipment of ODME. maybe a DVD prototype. I think it has date of 95/01

[@meeder78]

It was one of two proposed 2nd generation CD formats. Both lost out on the technology developed by 3M which became the DVD standard. printwiki.org/High-Density_Compact_Disc

[@johnathin0061892]

Definitely sounds like a prototype, "High Density CD" is what Philips/Sony called their proposed replacement for the CD that would merge with another standard and eventually evolve into the DVD. You might have a valuable collector's item there.

[@gameoverwehaveeverypixelco1258]

Cool I'll have to post a picture. I'll leave a link when I do here.

[@ndiamone9136]

That's also right around the same time as the 1.3 GB CDs that took the 99 min CD's trick of tightening the track pitch to a new level. Be interesting to find out.

[@scothohl4586]

My "little" brother had Bozo The Clown, the book didn't make it, however the record part did make it a little longer before Mom had tossed it out...

[@databits]

Awesome! LOL

[@CommodoreFan64]

One of my older cousins she had talk to me books, but I had books on tape at that point with my own tape player, and thought the talk to me books where just plain stupid, now I think they are fairly neat for what they are.

[@ndiamone9136]

OMG I had the original incarnation of the Dial-a-Story as a kid in the 70s a.k.a. Spin--A-Story) and then my little nephews discovered the ones you showcase when they were in e.g. kindergarden or primary school I think. The only difference between the two was - if you take one apart - which also being partially-autistic as a kid like every other techno-dork I did with annoying frequency (according to the grown-ups) these were cut normally at 45 and the original versions were cut half-speed-mastered at 33 playing at 66 RPM. The discs in both were almost half as fat as an Edison disc being nearly 1/8 of an inch thick to an Edison's 1/4 inch and of course single-sided and made from whatever leftover grey styrene happened to be lying around. It's not solid grey though, each disc is different and has flow marks and die marks and kind of gives a grey-and-white-and-black psychedelic effect when spun on a normal turntable. The cut on the other hand was about as deep and thick as I've seen. If you play one with a 78 stylus you get a fair idea of how the sapphire straight shank stylus enclosed in the book would sound, but it still sounds like a normal 78 played with a 33 stylus, so I think the cut is even wider than that, maybe 4 mils instead of 3 for a 78. The stylus from inside the Toys R Us Geoffrey Close N Play phonograph does NOT work as it is too narrow. The original 66 RPM ones are also a vertical cut as well. These I never had one open to check. Since you missed the French one (black - cylindrical-shaped and larger than the rest at around 3-1/2 inches tall), the remaining players starting from that one, go from 45 RPM all the way up to 105 and even 133 for the real tiny cards if you eve find one of those that has about ten seconds of audio. I knew there was another 66 2/3 RPM toy (half speed mastered at 33) besides the original Spin-A-Story and could never remember what it was. This baseball card player may be it. The others run at 78, 90 (half speed mastered at 45) and a couple you didn't show run at 156.5 (half-speed mastered at 78). All the other toys with small records that DON'T rotate the turntable are hella hilarious as well. Mattel's Teach and Learn Computer and Mattel-O-Phone and Carnival Toy and Mighty Tiny Record Player and Talking Football and Alphabet Phone and Space and Comic Mini Picture Disc Player and etc etc etc. I keep meaning to modify my Barclay-to-Phone player for the additional speeds (I was going to use a motor and sleeve out of a toasted rim-drive Living Letters 3-inch tape recorder from the 60s since the drive is the same) and then build a holder for the e.g. cards and such so that I could get actual electronic capture of all the toys. One thing you might want to try and find as well - the first run of the Talk-To-Me books had rigid discs slid inbetween the double pages, meaning the recording was in the same place front and back instead of mini-soundsheets pasted in different spots on each page face allowing for different placement. Also - if nobody has done a video about it yet, they can check out the various 4-track cassette and 8-track toys like Teddy Ruxpin and Big Bird (same technology) the Child Guidance Talk N Play book and 4-track cassette teaching system and the 2XL robots that use 8-track tapes. And then there's the Borg-Warner System 80 teaching machine which used a dual-16MM slide inside of a caddy and a 12-RPM LP record playing inside out to ask the questions. Each question was repeated 25 times in its' own band, so that when a child got an answer wrong, instead of moving to the next band of questions, the tonearm just moved e.g. one groove width. This is why a lot of times when you find the records, you find the main revolution all worn out and barely audible but the other 24 repetitions sound perfectly fine. Two R&D versions from 1968 (product debuted in the Summer of `69 in time for school in the fall) had slightly different formats. One was constant linear velocity that started with short questions near the beginning at 16 RPM and by the time it got to the outer edge at the end, it was running close to 8 RPM and the questions were over twice as long. The other one stuck to the 12 RPM format and tried to squeeze longer questions near the outer edge where the fidelity is better, but that didn't work as well as they'd hoped either. Oh and don't forget the prototype Seeburg 1000s from 1958 that ran inside-out and counterclockwise on the A (bottom) side and conventionally on the top side.

[@yosi1989]

13:26 talking business card?

[@ndiamone9136]

And then - talking about discs where the stylus rotates instead of the disc - was another late 60s or early 70s contraption whose name escapes me at the moment. Along the same vein as a Kenner Play N Show Projector, instead of a mini-LP centered onto a larger disc of slides mounted around the edges, this contraption was the same thing but had a multi-track sound spiral impressed in the center with the slides mounted around the edge of a grey styrene injection molded disc which easily broke (like most styrene 45s and 78s). When you played it, the sound track for that particular slide was directly under where the stylus was at. It would rotate from underneath (as if you flipped over a Fisher Price Talk to Me Player on its' head), play the corresponding track and then you would flip the lever to advance to the next slide and sound track and repeat. Playing one of these on a conventional turntable you will find that not only are the tracks cut inside out, but BACKWARDS as well - requiring either a counterclockwise (DJ) turntable or a stylus playing from underneath like a CD/LaserDisc. Once I remember the name of the toy I will post it unless somebody beats me to it.

[@teacfan1080]

I can see a 5-year old getting early practice on becoming a DJ by scratching on those manual players!

[@xargos]

There's another toy I can think of where the stylus spins around the record. It's the Sound A Round Talking Puzzle. They're a lot bigger than these things and they're completely manual.

[@ndiamone9136]

Those had lateral-cut as well as vertical-cut versions as well. It's basically the first cut of a normal LP with the inside die-cut out. I used to talk to mastering engineers a lot when my uncle was doing it in the 70s and I'd go along some nights to get out from underfoot at my gramma's house. Especially during the R&D for a lot of these and with blanks being expensive, when they'd cut a track for the puzzle, they'd also cut one round of half-a-dozen 3-inch or so doll record test cuts around a circumference halfway out from the center. That way they could get the puzzle track from the edge of the disc and the doll records from farther in. I might even have one of the discarded tests around here someplace.

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

Those would make incredible horror books! Imagine having to crank through each chapter as you hear menacing noises, creepy breathing, screams - especially through a tinny speaker.

[@crazyivan030983]

Wow, this manual talking books sounds surprisingly well :)

[@petergplus6667]

I had similar stuff in a 199x Bertelsmann Encyclopedi. You put the device on certain pages inside the books.

[@interlace84]

11:06 in some alternate timeline, Thanos took on birdwatching as a hobby instead.

[@Craig_Spurlock]

Cool, the unmistakable voice of Mário Machado!

[@dvdemon187]

18:00 *For science!!!*

[@MuhammadDaudkhanTV100]

Fantastic idea and cool

[@lizichell2]

Amazing sound quality from a device of its simplicity and age

[@edwincancelii2917]

I remember the Fisher-Price’ Talk-To-Me books & little records.

[@Bangulo]

I remember this commercial for the sports talk player on tv, They way it was advertised was that you could put any card and it would talk. or if it wasn't thats how it was always interpreted to my small child brain lol. I haven't heard of these since 89 or what year it came out. Crazy!

[@wildchurch]

I want that Audible Audubon real bad!

[@gianlusc]

I feel for today 's kids that can only touch flat glass screens...

[@5roundsrapid263]

My son prefers “retro” technology. He finds old PCs, Macs, and game consoles, and gets them working again. I help him with it, of course...

[@moth.monster]

eh, with game consoles and pcs we still have plenty of buttons and sticks and knobs to play with. but i get how it feels. everything used to be better in the past, right? except for all the things that sucked

[@jamesffxl]

I remember seeing that baseball one in a store.

[@christo930]

Those dial-a-story players, you said the internals was a close and play phonograph, but when I searched I found a battery operated phonograph by Kenner which plays regular old 45s. Did you misspeak?.

[@ndiamone9136]

See main post. The internal workings are virtually identical to the Close N Play apart from the stylus size and the fact that the 66 RPM ones are vertically-cut like a doll record or See N Say or some such since a vertically-cut record requires fewer parts to play back in an acoustic fashion. If these newer Dial-A-Story versions are lateral cut instead, and are cut normally at 45, then - especially if the Close N Play center spindle was a little bit small - you would be able to play it on there since it doesn't care how thick the record is. I can't remember now, but I think one guy here on KZbin took one of the modern versions apart and played it on the similar Kenner My Books That Talk player after re-using one of their metal center-adapters from a broken disc.

[@christo930]

@@ndiamone9136 What I found showed a close-n-play to be a standard 45rpm record player that plays 45s when you close it. It does not play non-standard or proprietary records. At least the one I found.

[@ndiamone9136]

@@christo930 Film at 11. Read the original post again. The internal mechanics of the Spin-A-Story/Dial-A-Story/Turn-and-Learn books is exactly the same as a Close-N-Play phonograph without the unneeded ability to open it up and change the record. As such - the fact that 1 there are both 66 RPM as well as 45 RPM versions 2 normal 45 RPM discs of the period are laterally-cut monaural vs vertical (doll) 3 the hole is a little bit small to fit over a 45 adapter regardless of speed are all irrelevant since the SAS etc record was never intended for being played on anything else but it's own mechanism any more than any of the other players here were intended to be played only on its' own player.

[@christo930]

@@ndiamone9136 Exactly the same, yet entirely different. One takes batteries and has an electric motor and electric amplifier, the other requires you spin it and is entirely acoustically amplified. One takes standard 45 records, the other has a fixed record. I honestly do not see what these two things have in common. Absolutely nothing from what I can see. 45s were stereo by then.

[@ndiamone9136]

​@@christo930 Look again. 1.They are both acoustically amplified. 2. The first full year of stereo major-label 45s wasn't until 1979. Around 3%-5% of Top 40 hits in 1976 were still sent out in mono for stock copies. 1977 reduced it to a couple of percent and I think there was only three or four in 1978 - Ready to Take a Chance Again by Barry Manilow comes to mind as either the last mono single or certainly one of four or five. The only place you could get the stereo single mix at that time was the white label Mono/Stereo promo 45 or in the case of the Manilow - only on the Foul Play soundtrack as they used the mono mix for the Greatest Hits LP. That says nothing about the B-sides. I have several from the mid-70s where the hit is mono but the filler is stereo. Minor label mono went all the way out to the end of the decade with some mid-chart hits along with songs that bumped the bottom of the Billboard Hot, Dance, R&B and Country charts but still got decent airplay.

[@Ale.K7]

Nice!

[@databits]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@jtrade34]

this was for COMMUNICATION SKILL BUILDERS INC. Medical learning cards. A memory learning system for those who were in medical school

[@hicknopunk]

I had the sports card player where the cards moved through the player and had a magnetic strip. It must have been the early 90s version.

[@coolelectronics1759]

that sounds to me like this thing I used in school called the language master! Are you sure you aren't confusing it with that?

[@coolelectronics1759]

it was about the sise of a shoebox and it sat on a table, it had a set of colored tape recorder style keys

[@coolelectronics1759]

I was expecting the dial-a-story to be some kind of service where you call some number located on the book somewhere and you hear it on your phone. Like it accessed some audio book library like on-demand

[@ninjabluewings]

OMG!! I do need one of these lovely, cute players

[@litoboy5]

Lovely

[@iamnobody2]

i remember having the fisher price muppet show book and player, good times

[@RETROMAN-YouTube-Channel]

Try playing some of these on a normal record player. That is, if you can find a manual one with a tone arm that can reach the spindle.

[@TheErador]

Spiral binding!

[@TheVCRKing]

Brad: I'm from St. Louis so Cardinals are a big thing here. Were you mentioning the baseball team??

[@sim61642]

12:02 What the heck , he sounds just like Danny DeVito...

[@lebeyes]

You've gotta send one of those Talking Books to @DJAngeloUK, he's wicked.

[@rjc63]

Can you get The White album in this format? :P

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

Men in Black aside, I think literally every song is too long. It would be like those early 90s adventure games on 16 floppy discs.

[@coondogtheman]

I'm curious if you can take the record out of the talking books and play it on a normal record player.

[@ndiamone9136]

Apart from the speed, the 66 RPM ones for sure (see above post), although you'd have to get a METAL 45 adapter that's just a teeny bit small in order to center it on the player. All the normal adapters I had were all a hair too big. And remember - the disc in either case is probably 3x the thickness of a normal 45 so you certainly wouldn't be able to play it on a changer.

[@coondogtheman]

@@ndiamone9136 The player I have is a changer but you can just swing that arm out of the way. I have the little yellow 45 adapters. Could you file them down a hair or maybe they will work?

[@ndiamone9136]

@@coondogtheman The single-play 45 (spider) adapters will not work as the record is too thick. The CHANGER adapters will not work either for the same reason as the slot between the reserve stack and the platter that ``shaves'' the disc off the stack and plops it down is also too narrow. The ``dome'' style adapters MAY work, but I've tried putting the styrene dome adapters on a lathe with some polishing compound but all that did was melt the adapter. If I was trying it again, I'd get an e.g. aluminum dome adapter, mount that on a lathe, center it optically with instruments and then sand it down some. Course everytime you dismounted it to try it out on the disc you'd have to go through the optical instrument centering process again until you got it right. Unless you just wanted to have 4 or 5 aluminum blocks and carve your own.

[@coondogtheman]

@@ndiamone9136 Well I don't have any of these books or a metalworking shop so I can't try this. I was hoping someone out there would try it.

[@wintersbattleofbands1144]

Um, all records, especially little kids taking books, don't have backwards-masked messages on them.

[@treestandsafety3996]

Neat!

[@AMOKIAN]

😜