Some old technologies make wonderful toys!

Walker, Harry [photographer] A smiling young boy,
in a striped shirt, sitting on a wooden deck next to
 a small toy phonograph.

       You may not consider a record player to be a toy, but these make excellent additions to playrooms for children and grandchildren. Introduce a part of your past to them through music and dance and they will be delighted with the novelty of this former technology!

       In American English, "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to Emile Berliner's upstart Gramophone, a very different machine which played discs. "Talking machine" was the comprehensive generic term, but in the early 20th century the general public was increasingly applying the word "phonograph" indiscriminately to both cylinder and disc machines and to the records they played. By the time of the First World War, the mass advertising and popularity of the Victor Talking Machine Company's Victrolas (a line of disc-playing machines characterized by their concealed horns) was leading to widespread generic use of the word "victrola" for any machine that played discs, which were however still called "phonograph records" or simply "records", almost never "victrola records".

This record player was a favorite toy in
our home when my girls were young.

       After electrical disc-playing machines started appearing on the market during the second half of the 1920s, usually sharing the same cabinet with a radio receiver, the term "record player" was increasingly favored by users when referring to the device. Manufacturers, however, typically advertised such combinations as "radio-phonographs". Portable record players (no radio included), with a latched cover and an integrated power amplifier and loudspeaker, were fairly common as well, especially in schools and for use by children and teenagers.

       In the years following the Second World War, as "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, monophonic) and, later, "stereo" (stereophonic) component sound systems slowly evolved from an exotic specialty item into a common feature of American homes, the description of the record-spinning component as a "record changer" (which could automatically play through a stacked series of discs) or a "turntable" (which could hold only one disc at a time) entered common usage. By about 1980 the use of a "record changer", which might damage the stacked discs, was widely disparaged. So, the "turntable" emerged triumphant and retained its position to the end of the 20th century and beyond. Through all these changes, however, the discs have continued to be known as "phonograph records" or, much more commonly, simply as "records".

       The brand name Gramophone was not used in the USA after 1901, and the word fell out of use there, although it has survived in its nickname form, Grammy, as the name of the Grammy Awards. The Grammy trophy itself is a small rendering of a gramophone, resembling a Victor disc machine with a taper arm.

       Modern amplifier-component manufacturers continue to label the input jack which accepts the output from a modern magnetic pickup cartridge as the "phono" input, abbreviated from "phonograph".

"A welcome gift for any child- an Electric Phonograph of his or her very own! Easy to use...
plays 78-rpm records up to 12 in. Built in tone chamber amplification gives full, rich tone.
Balanced tone arm has tone-set playing head that locks in playing or rest position for safe
carrying and storage. Self-starting electric turntable motor; on-off switch..."

Discovering old technology with kids.

• photo and message on phonograph postcards in 1930s
• clip art of an old Brumswick Phonograph and a Victrola, These are both even older than record players.
• young students react to an old-fashioned turntable...