The 3M Multimedia Sound-Slide System Vintage 1960s

Taking a look at this presentation system from the '60s which utilizes analog audio on a grooved "floppy" disc in combination with a photographic slide. The system was automatic, using tones recorded along with narration to advance the slides.
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[@BilisNegra]

This looks somewhat complicated for its time and even nutty as for the rotating head mechanism. One would think it was a weird novelty prone to failure, yet you just had to replace belts, lubricate parts and the like, instead of performing a painstaking restoration on it. All the mechanics and electronics worked fine on this over half-a-century-old machine, it's so amazing! With that in mind I imagine this very high quality device which was built like a tank must have been really expensive, which is probably a major reason for this system not to catch on. Thank you for showing us this very interesting piece of historic tech.

[@SeanBZA]

Reason to use a pencil is because the housing would normally be toasty hot when the lamp failed, so touching with hand would burn you.

[@databits]

True, but I think it would be wise to let the lamp cool before touching anything in there. A pencil may have been helpful because there is a lever underneath the bulb that lifts the bulb out of the receptacle. The point is, the hole on that top housing isn’t big enough to stick a pencil through.

[@KanalFrump]

wildly complicated rotating replay mechanism, remarkable how well it worked. You have to wonder about the prototypes that led to this design. I bet one of the rejected designs had the disc rotate inside the cartridge with a stationary and presumably simpler mechanism, but they somehow found that to be less workable than spinning the whole pickup assembly around the optical barrel.

[@mycosys]

I imagine alignment would be impractical with a rotating disc like that which could be economically produced to have dozens per show. Keeping the precision in the machine makes sense

[@joearnold6881]

Watch out for that rollerskating class. They’re building a Death Ray

[@automatedelectronics6062]

Amazing!!!!!! Thank you! What a cool format! 3m, with it's history of magnetic recording tape, it's no wonder they would use this method for adding sound to a slide presentation. Probably the advantage here would be combining a sound recording with a slide in one machine without having to have a separate record and record player. That's what they traditionally did to add sound to a filmstrip or slide presentation. Had this system caught on, it would have become obsoleted when DVD's were introduced, just like any small venue projected program was. Although the DVD or even Blu-ray wasn't good enough for use in a movie theater, traditional movie film has been replaced with a digital file.

[@born_again_torinos]

These are the kind of units I like to see. What a marvel of engineering.

[@alyro-ls1dv]

Thanks for the video, haven't seen such a beautiful designed machine for multimedia presentation. so easy to change the pictures suceeding each other putting the presentation together on short notice, exchanging single slides including their audio comment. just brillant.

[@baraahamida2655]

Brad is the best host on the Databits channel

[@RyanSchweitzer77]

Seeing and hearing this system in action, I wonder if any of these 3M "Sound-Slide" systems were ever used by any broadcast television stations in their film chains back in this system's day to air slides of station IDs, promos, or local commercials with an announcement. Slides were used quite frequently for such back then in television, and a system like this would've eliminated the need to cue & playback a separate audio tape cartridge while the slide was up on the air for the audio announcement.

[@mycosys]

It just wouldnt have had the audio quality required for broadcast

[@coondogtheman]

How does it transfer the audio from the spinning head to the rest of the machine? Like a VCR video head drum?

[@mcramp20]

Very cool mechanism!

[@WatchingDude]

I can't remember if it was the same device but I remember something very much like this when I was in school than the 70s. I think it even had the circle of Magnetic material around the slide.

[@Mrshoujo]

I wouldn't mind seeing the entire presentation this cartridge of slides contains.

[@m3snusteve]

4:20 that unit reminds me of the film Runaway starring Tom Selleck (1984) and Silent Running (1972).

[@marktubeie07]

Amazing system. You didn't touch on the actual microphone recording process and how much recording time is available on each disc & how the operator knew when the recording tone was running out. Any thoughts ?🤗

[@anatolbaskak]

and elaborate on how the head actually follows the spiral track

[@marktubeie07]

@@anatolbaskak Please see my reply to a comment by yogibear2k2 below...

[@01chippe]

@@anatolbaskak It looked like there was a protruding piece of metal in front of the playback head. Presumably the flat metal protrusion would fit between the groove of the recorded disc, or perps a track or two in front of or behind the actual playback groove and the head would have been free moving and the groove guided the head along the disc. There seemed to be a scraping noise as the audio played, not audible in the actual audio, so that scraping would have been the protruding piece gliding inside the groove.

[@CartoonPhreak]

Disney entered a licensing agreement with 3M to release their animated classics on its Multimedia Sound-Slide Projector System (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, etc)

[@19king14]

Just curious; Does it say the max time for audio per slide? And, what is it (sound) that executes the cycle for the next slide? Thanks

[@frankowalker4662]

That's one hell of a roler skate. LOL What a mechanical marvel and great idea.

[@lutello3012]

Record a slow scan tv version of the slide on the slide. 🤓

[@zusurs]

Dude, you could've replaced that receptacle for power cord for a regular C8 socket in like 10 minutes flat...

[@BilisNegra]

Now you mention, that's true! Yet he says he owns two other devices that use the same cable, maybe he did not buy it for this device but long ago... And, well, somehow it's nice it's been kept all original after all.

[@anatolbaskak]

good stuff!

[@AudioMobil]

The motor attached to the blower reminds me of the turntable motors of old Rock Ola or Rowe AMI jukeboxes.

[@raphaelschneider7852]

I thought the same thing when I saw it. Seeburg also used these. It’s funny that they were used in so many different things. The only downside of these motors is that they run quite hot.

[@icpizzaboy]

Is that Waite high school In Toledo i heard? If so I graduated from that School.

[@daviddanser7801]

Thank you for another awesome video, what a cool projector

[@databits]

Thanks for watching!

[@mycosys]

Wow that thing had to be insanely expensive - theres basically no effort to reduce costs, every function has its own motor, just about every part is custom cast an/or machined, the quality is wild but they must have cost an absolute bomb. I have trouble seeing where its advantage over 16mm film lies. I'd be interested to see the presentation if you archived it, community & science ed really interest me and that would have been quite a time to be involved in mixed community education in the US in so many ways

[@msylvain59]

Weird they placed the focus control on the remote, it is not a setting you want to touch after the projector is installed in the room and set up for the projection.

[@djsherz]

From my distant memories of using slide projectors, the focus control was not about setting the projector up with the screen - you did that manually with the focus ring on the front of the projector. The mechanised focus control was to compensate for the position of each slide. As the slide enters the area in front of the lamp, a tiny variation in the position of the slide had huge effects on the projected picture. The heat of the lamp would often cause the slide to bulge slightly, shifting the focus, which you would then compensate for using the buttons on the remote. My dad's 1970s projector had an autofocus system for this, but god only knows how that worked!

[@pablorai769]

​@@djsherz You're right, I also had a projector and the focus had to be adjusted sometimes mid projection. Most automatic focusing systems in slide projectors are based on the use of an optical module, which comprises a small lamp, a few lenses and mirrors, and a light sensor made from two series-connected light dependent resistors (LDRs), which function as a potential divider. If the image was blurred, one of the left or right LDR would receive more light from the mirrors, then the circuit motor would move the objective till the light fell between the L and R LDRs onto a central LDR.

[@databits]

Very good explanation.

[@channelwoodgrange]

The hell kind of roller skates they using?

[@ViegasSilva]

That's clearly a droid from Tatooine!

[@pchelovekPV]

@databits do you by any chance have sanyo cvp721ft projector in your possession? maybe manuals or any info on where to find them?

[@bobsbits5357]

hi have seen this tec before in a mag record i was at a place i was doing some training there was 100's of mag records in the old house the place was used for fire training back in the day i wish i had asked for them they were 3m as well the gov rent out audio player you will not get dad worked for the met office there are format i saw in the bracknell office they used like this lucky find for you

[@Madness832]

Any idea where and when the slides were made?

[@Dwall44]

Hi, I wanted to ask if you still had your micro mini tape recorder? I just got one off eBay and it needs a new belt. Wanted to know if you could help me with that?

[@databits]

I still have mine! Sure I can help. How can I help?

[@YassineKAOUANE]

awesome

[@GarySSmith-nd1go]

Grooves?

[@stpworld]

I have a Dukane portable film strip viewer and it does the sound from Audio cassette.

[@Ale.K7]

Very interesting machine!

[@yorgle]

That remote is TOTALLY based on a Kodak Carousel wired remote...

[@pierrejeanf.dupuis4150]

I recently enjoyed playing around with a slide projector with a build-in-screen that had a build in Compact Cassette player. I loaded it with some educational slides with Astronomic subjects such as planets combined with a Synthesizer Greats tape. Good fun. If the product you showed here ended up at my end, I'm sure I'd keep one slide as part of my obsolete media collection. Others to be sold on individually. The projector to be sold "as is, in need of repair" for about 10 Euro's (5 Euros for "Defective" to 25 Euro's for "Wil probably work when belts are replaced").

[@GiddeonFox]

I wonder how the slides got mismatched like that. You'd think people would re-use the sound-on-slide cartridges, sure, but why wouldn't they re-record the audio too?

[@01chippe]

They weren’t mismatched. He explained that a few of the slides were missing and he substituted generic slides.

[@scaleop4]

👍👍

[@crazyivan030983]

14 kg? Wow...

[@yogibear2k220]

Quite a neat system. It's a shame that it failed. I guess the slides were too costly to produce. And the failure rate would be would be quite high. I was curious, though, if those slides could of been played on a record player as they were just grooves. I am guessing not but, just a stupid idea of mine. Great find though Brad. Thanks for the video.

[@marktubeie07]

As it was a magnetic coated disc, the audio head moved across the recorded surface. It was guided by the grooves using a 'pin' that just traced the grooves to move the head. The grooves themselves had no audio. Hope this helps :)

[@yogibear2k220]

@@marktubeie07 Yes, thank you.

[@cptsalek]

Despite the cost I guess it failed because the use of an open reel tape recorder offered a better sound quality and much more flexibility. Even the most basic recorders allowed one to mix several tracks (Sound, narration) onto one.

[@Mrshoujo]

*could have

[@mycosys]

The machine would have been insanely expensive - there was no effort made to reduced cost, one motor per function, a plethora of cast and/or machined custom parts. Its hard to see what advantage it would have had over 16mm film

[@thesteveruss]

Love it ...

[@wattehel]

Wow stereo music is on the mini record recording also amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😑☹ Yeaaa. Otherwise a great video.

[@databits]

Stereo music? I was not aware of this feature.

[@wattehel]

@@databits it was the music playing over the recording as you were demoing the record I was being sarcastic

[@databits]

@@wattehel darn it, I love sarcasm. Sorry I missed that.

[@wattehel]

@@databits I guess I should just ask at 10:46 did you mean to have music playing over the audio demo spoiling the said demo?

[@databits]

@@wattehel - yup!

[@roytofilovski9530]

I'm not the smartest person in the world - so let's get that out of the way.... I don't get the audio. Why would magnetic tape have groves like a record?

[@BilisNegra]

You need to guide the head along a definite path, and this is the 60s. Stepper motor-based systems the kind you find in floppy drives and optical drives were probably rocket science at the time.

[@roytofilovski9530]

@@BilisNegra Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for the answer.

[@01chippe]

It’s the same idea used on compact discs, or any optical disc system. There is a groove (Track) which guides the laser along the path so it doesn’t fall between the “groove”.

[@bobsbits5357]

hi DANGER please be very carefull with the words you uused with people with needs the world is very very PC now i work in a place where people have lost there jobs therey had miss said things