Yet more mini records

That storage unit is bigger than my New York City apartment 😂

As soon as you said you may have to cut… I knew it would mess with someone’s Yin and Yang 🤣 Then you started doing the deed, and it was then - I knew someone, somewhere, would have been on petition.com to start a protest 😂🤣 Ahhhh, who knew I’d be interested in something like this, yet I was. Love how you tell an old devices story. Cheers Matt. Lee

Completely off topic but in mitigation the community section is absent from Patreon website: I saw this and immediately thought (most likely with many other)… I know a man who will know what this is…. https://x.com/jamesblunt/status/1757712872648454406?s=46&t=Azd_Tt-NrmgTGcQn8-03jQ

Hmm... pretty sure I heard that first recording on John Peel one night, credited to. "A. Berkenfield"

Maybe it was a specifically English misunderstanding... granny overhears grandson saying "I like talking to birds, me!" And she made what she thought was an extremely prescient birthday purchase. "Sorry, gran, not the tit I was particularly interested in, but it's the thought that counts, and all that."

A year or two ago when I was learning bird sounds, I wanted one of these just for the vintage appeal, but I figured at this point it would do exactly what yours did: turn every bird into a warbler.

Just Yet ANOTHER Excellent Video, good sir. I remember seeing those kinds of records here in the states in the 70's, some were placed on cereal boxes for kids.

That first machine pretty much transformed the bird sounds into a Russian numbers station, great stuff.

The Pine Siskin sounds like a Tardis.

Those cards have quite the Ladybird book design to them. As a kid obsessed with sound effects, I'd have loved players like this.

The pictures on the cards are just the right size for the national machine, despite the text covering more area. Coincidence? I could see the garbled speech being sampled/edited for music tracks if there was more of it.

I love that National player. This is 100% the kind of nonfunctioning prop that would have been designed for a "The World Of 2000" educational/promotional film made in 1950. Where every visionary glimpse seems to be "the thing you're already familiar with will still exist, and use the exact same basic technology and work pretty much the same as it does now. But in The Future it'll be a fraction of its current size." I can easily imagine Worlds Fair audiences being dazzled by the idea of the full-length cast album of "Annie Get Your Gun," recorded on a single Hypervinyl disc the size of a silver dollar, playing in living two-channel stereo on a gadget no larger than a couple of packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes...

Did you try running the 3V into the first device with the batteries removed? Just wonder if there’s some circuit logic that says you can’t have both but if you do its batteries that take priority.

I could see how the first device might work for study in a certain setting, with certain cards being quite collectable, and you could at least understand how it works. The modern equivalent would require an augmented reality app and a questionable cloud service.

I bet if you bought enough of the records for that thing you'd find at least one with covert messages to or from espionage agents. It's the only rationale I can see for the thing.

For trouble shooting a couple of things worth trying. 1. Try and press the tip of the soldering iron on to top of the electrolytic can to heat it up while operating the device. 350c should be more than enough. Just hold it momentarily to see if it improved playback. 2. You can try and just temporarily bridge a capacitor across an existing capacitor by just touching the legs (being mindful of polarity) with a known good capacitor of roughly similar value. (it doesn't need to be exact) you can always temporarily tack a solder a capacitor in place from the front or back without removing the old one for testing.

Yeah, like MrHammond says, some lube might fix it. My phonograph absolutely could not keep the proper speed until I gave it some lube. (I think the instruction manual says to do that every 1,000 hours of playing time, but I must have lost track)

And, by the way, don't listen to this with 2024 ears. I imagine at the time, with records cut from magazines and cereal boxes, (yes, I remember cutting a Monkees record from frosted flakes box), these wouldn't have sounded quite as harsh.

I'm gonna say it: Techmoan has gone to the birds! (I'm old, deal with it!) I have to say, it's pretty amazing to see the cleverness of the inventors and engineers of the past. With all the digital and computational options that are available today, the solutions that these folk developed just seemed elegant. Yes, I could see Mr. Phelps taking out a little card reading record player to hear his instructions.

Very interesting little piece of history ! I'm wondering if that fail device would works better with some sort of lube / grease or something... Probably not but yeah. Sad because it looks awesome. Thanks !

What, after recording all those post office slides, you're not recording and uploading all these bird songs for posterity in the human record?!?!?

Thanks for the video! Some thoughts: - I think the slightly larger cards were actually having slightly larger discs and that's why it cut out in the middle in the smaller player - While never having seen any, I am guessing that if the card is slightly off the correct center position, that could cause the audio not to run ant fixed speed but faster and slower as it spins around even if the motor is spinning at a fixed speed

I was also expecting a male voice but of course "that guy" wasn't 😊

Great couple of videos! Would be cool if you could find some of the cards that would fit in the National device -- I agree it's very snazzily-designed. If anyone doesn't agree, they're a son of a wrrrgl-myrgggl...glrrrglCLIK.

I could not help noticing the band-aid. Hope the thumb is not sore anymore. Nice video once more with a pleasing ending. Thank you.

The KX-501 is a lovely little device. And the bird cards are essentially the same concept as Radio 4’s Tweet of the Day.

• It's as good as Victorian - John James Audubon's Birds of America ornithological artwork was printed in 1827 and 1838. • I'm going to ask the inevitable question - can they be played via the Panapic or the Sopic? • I begin to wonder if miniature magnetic tape devices were manufactured to do the same thing. I recall the Panasonic RC-6900 talking clock. On the other hand, the devices would be more expensive to manufacture than their worth. • My brain takes a significant amount of time to tick at an acceptable tolerance every day. • There's one particular device I would be thrilled to see you get working, but I'm more than happy to wait. • You could try to play these records outside - resulting in scaring away all your birds. 🤔 Unexpected videos are a treat; thanks very much for this one. Take care 🤍.

These mini records are kind of cool, fun little devices. Nearly useless these days, but still interesting and I agree that the National device has a cool and simple design. Stay Weird Mat--you're the best! Unless you meant that you don't like weird weeks, in which case then avoid weirdness at all costs. 😉😃

Funny, never seen such stuff... But that's why Mats videos are so interesting, always coming with new stuff I've never seen :-D. I'm wondering if it would sound any better after some lubrication, or maybe a recapping (although the caps don't seem to be leaky at the first glance)

That was a pleasing ending, even if it didn't play all the way through.

Sending out a video right when I'm heading out to church. Techmoan, you test my faith!!

Mat, please keep in mind that people who watch your videos and especially us Patreon pillocks actually enjoy watching these, as you’re phrasing it “useless/meaningless/tedious” videos. ;-) OK, I have to confess that I only managed to watch about two minutes of the 90 minute UK Post Office Commpak special so apparently even I have my limits but still… :-)

Yay never too many