Episode: 1339
Title: HPR1339: Legacy Technology: My Victrola
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1339/hpr1339.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:48:04

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All right, what we've been listening to there is a record
by Benny Goodman and his orchestra
on the okay label that was called a string of pearls.
And I'm playing it on one of my prize possessions.
By the way, John Culp here and Lackett Louisiana.
And I've done a number of podcasts about
techy kind of related things so far.
And this episode I thought I would introduce
you guys to some really old technology.
That is my 1917 Victrola by the Victor Talking Machine Company.
I'm going to put a couple of pictures in the show notes
so you can see this thing.
It's a very large record player.
Excuse me.
Well, I closed the door over here so the air conditioner didn't sound too mild.
It's a large machine made of...
Well, what is the exterior wood?
It's mahogany, I think.
It's got a, I think, a mahogany exterior.
It's very fancy.
The lid opens up to reveal a platter that's covered in green felt
and a brass arm, I think,
and a needle that, like, a little needle head that comes off.
And it runs on physical power.
This is not an electrical machine at all.
The sound that you heard when I first started recording
was me cranking up the machine to engage or engage,
I don't know, to tighten the spring.
I'll do some right now.
So what I'm doing is I'm tightening up the spring
that then slowly unwinds using a regulator to turn the platter
at a constant speed of 78 revolutions per minute.
And the records that you play on these are called 78s
because that's the speed at which they have to rotate to be heard properly.
This, it is maybe three and a half to four feet tall
and it has a space underneath to put records.
You can hear that I'll open up the doors so you can hear.
It's got two doors in front of the horn.
The horn is the part where the sound comes out.
What happens here is you spin a record,
a needle drags along the record and creates vibrations
that are then transferred to a membrane that's embedded in the arm.
And those then are amplified along the length of a cylinder
that gradually gets wider until it comes out into a cone
that's inside the machine.
It features some really old ones where the cone or the horn is
sticking up in this great beautiful thing that sticks way up in the air
like a big flower.
This is not that sore.
This one, the horn is embedded inside the machine.
One of the advantages of that is that the horn can be covered by doors,
one, two doors, and the doors then become your volume control.
As you can hear the records when the doors are closed
and you're really loud, you just open up the doors
and you can change the length, the level of openness,
I suppose, to adjust the volume up and down.
And so it's pretty cool.
This is one of my favorite pieces of technology that I have.
And one of the things I like best about it is that it is nearly a hundred years old
yet it still works just like the day it was made.
The controller is from 1917 and I have a label inside that is still perfectly visible.
I've taken a picture of it and I'll post that on the show notes as well
that runs down all the various patents and copyright things they have related to the machine.
It also has the original price.
The retail price of this machine in 1917 was $215.
That's quite a lot of money for back then.
It's the kind of thing that only fairly well to do people would have
because the machine itself costs quite a bit.
$215 back then was, I don't know, maybe over $1,000 now or $2,000.
I don't really know how to do that kind of calculation for inflation.
But it was a lot of money.
Now apart from that, each record also cost quite a lot of money.
They were essentially $1 per record.
Now first the records only would have music on one side and the other side would be blank.
And so it was about $1 per song, which is what nowadays people would pay on
something like the Amazon MP3 store or the iTunes downloads or something like that.
But back then, $1 per song would have been more like, I don't know, $10 or $20 per song nowadays.
But it was new technology and this is the kind of thing that really revolutionized
the way people consumed music.
Before the advent of commercial recordings and playback devices and even early radio,
the main way that people would consume music in the home was by purchasing sheet music
and then playing it themselves on the piano or the guitar or something like that.
And so music consumption was actually a very active participatory kind of thing
before the advent of recorded sound.
After that, and especially once recorded sound became very affordable,
the pattern of consumption changed from one of active participation to one of passive consumption.
You could sit back and listen to the greatest artists in the world performing whatever music you wanted.
There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to this.
The advantages would be that you could hear artists from the other side of the world
right there in your own living room without having to leave the house.
The disadvantage is that really decreased the general level of musicianship
in the middle class population.
And, of course, nowadays people listen to everything in a very personal way on their headphones
using MP3 players and phones and whatnot.
Victoria, at least, was still a communal sort of music experience.
You know, you would play a record and several people could gather around and listen to it at once.
This Victoria here is plenty loud to do something like a dance at a dance hall, for example.
If I'm playing dance record, like the one I just played,
if I were to open the doors up on this thing and play it in a fairly large hall with couples dancing,
they would hear it just fine.
And so, in that way, it could be used for community music events.
It's a great, great machine, one that I really love.
I've got records of all kinds on here.
Some of the records that sound best are the ones that feature the human voice,
where the human voice is front and center, like the old Italian opera singers.
One of the guys who got most famous and wealthy from the advent of this kind of recorded sound
was the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso.
And the reason is the human voice, especially that kind of very focused, loud tenor voice of that kind,
just sounds wonderful.
And I have here a record by Caruso that I'm going to play next.
This is Caruso singing, oh, so let me know,
it's a famous Neapolitan song.
And this is a record that I purchased from an antique record dealer in Austin, Texas,
for four dollars I paid for this record.
And I found lots of records at places like thrift stores and flea markets
for anywhere from a few cents a piece to a dollar or two a piece.
For the more high end one, you know, the more coveted after ones,
like this one, of Caruso singing this really famous song,
you have to pay a little bit more.
So let's listen to it.
Let's hear what it sounds like for Enrico Caruso,
saying, oh, solely me on this old Vectrola.
I'm going to wind it up and make sure it has plenty of power.
I'm also going to change the needle.
One thing that really strikes people is crazy about these old Vectrola's
is that you have to change the needle frequently.
It's recommended to change the needle after every record.
I usually will play two records, but since this is a special occasion
and I'm recording it for posterity,
I'm going to change the needle between each record.
And this is not as alarming as it sounds because I bought these packages
of 100 needles for about $3 per hundred.
So it's not a huge financial investment.
Not really sure what I'll do if I run out of them.
I don't know if the supplier that I used in Austin still is around or not.
But here we go.
Caruso singing, oh, solely me.
Wind up, you have to release the brake on the platter.
Give it a spin to help it start going and then set the needle down.
And then close the lid because the helps keep some of the surface noise out.
So right now I've got one door open.
I'm going to open the other one just a little bit.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
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And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
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And then close the lid.
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And then close the lid.
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And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
And then close the lid.
