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Radiograms Stereograms

mw0njm.

mw0njm.

A Brummie Dude
The big radio grams,you could buy,took half the living room up,any body have one in there front room.
complete box,£14,.tape recorder 2reel £30,17" tv £11,
record player 29/6,from laskys,most tranys,39/6
all in my 1961 practical radio.sorry no dab,or ipods
pete
 
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Radiograms

My father was an electrician at Lewis's in Birmingham and it was amazing what "shop soiled stock" used to come home. We had a radiogram before the war with a pickup modeled on an iron fist, you changed the needle after every playing of a 78. I also remember very well the electric washing machine with the powered wringer on the top that took my arm with the sheet when helping my mother. I was rushed off to the doctors but no harm had been done.

The radio had the Philip's magic eye for tuning, still around in the sixties when I built my first VHF set.

George
 
When I was a small boy during the war I was taken to visit an aunt who lived in a vast house on the Bristol Road. She had a pre-war radiogram with an autochange on it and this was demonstrated to me. I was spellbound as the arm moved out of the way, the next record thumped down, the arm found its way back to the correct position and a different piece of music blared forth. I had never seen anything like it.

"Auntie", I remember crying excitedly, "How does it do it - how does it do it?"

She looked at me knowingly as I awaited an explanation to this miracle. I felt that the wonders of the Universe were about to be revealed to me.

"Ah", she said, "It's the MECHANISM".

I was bitterly disappointed at the time, and remain so to this day, at the total inadequacy of this response. But it was all I ever got.

Chris
 
I remember big radiograms in wooden cabinets as my mother in law had one in the 60s, I used to have to put my son's carrycot on it.

We never had one as we had a green and cream cased Dansette player and then later a small portable one in a red case before having another Dansette player.
 
A friend of mine who was into radiograms had the latest large one in his house in Chester Road near the Birmingham Road island. You could hear it when he had it turned up some Sunday afternoons right down at the Chester Road Station railway bridge. I remember hearing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" in particular booming out.

We had a Dansette after the wind up gramophone which was my Mother's.
Then Mom bought a small solid teak radiogram with interchangeable powers which my brother has completely restored and it plays very well. This would have been bought in the early l960's.
 
I wonder if anyone here remembers the experimental Stereophonic broadcasts the BBC did back in the Late 50s/early60s ?

My dad was very keen on opera and classical music along with musical reproduction in general and I suspect we were the first family in the road to have a Stereo Radiogramme, now there a bit of equipment you never hear of now!!

Anyway to my point, Stereo records had been on the market for several years but regular Stereo broadcasts were some time away but the BBC were doing Stereo broadcasts on an experimental basis on Saturday mornings, so how did they manage that then?

Well they did it like this, the listener needed to have a VHF/FM radio tuned in to probably the third ( I
think)programme plus the TV tumed to the normal BBC TV channel ( No BBC2 then), This Channel would not normally be transmitting on a Saturday Morning dont forget.

So The radio was one channel and the TV became the other. Im no expert on these matters but I believe the idea was to demonstrate the feasibility of Stereo radio and I suppose it was an ideal way of testing out transmission systems. The transmissions were ,as far as i remember, classical music and I cant remember if these were from disc or maybe even live and they probably lasted no more than several hours if that.

Im sure many of you are aware that it was the advent of Cinemascope that led to many Cinemas installing Stereo sound, this was expensive to say the least and featured four separate tracks of sound.

Left, Right, Centre and rear effect just as the Dolby Surround that became popular in the home about ten years ago. The standard 35mm and 70mm film used magnetic sound tracks as this gave superior frequency response to the standard optical system. Ironically when Dolby stereo appeared years later it was bases on the optical sound system as Dolby labs had presumably managed to stretch the frequency response as well as the noise reduction, ie background hiss.

Even more interesting and suprising is that when Walt Disney released "Fantasia" it was available with a seperate six channel stereo sound track (Fantasound) which was optically printed onto a seperate synchronised film that ran on a seperate sound system as the film could not take six separate sound tracks and that was pre war!!

Interesting methinks !!
 
I remember those broadcasts, too - although I had forgotten about them until this post reminded me.

If you are interested in the other part of the post (the advent of CinemaScope and the introduction of stereo sound in the cinema) then this site :

https://www.widescreenmuseum.com/

is a treasure trove of information and nostalgia. Don't judge it by the current home page - it looks as though the site compiler has recently lost a much-loved pet - but look inside for all the info on old film formats - some with quite techical details..

Do you remember Cinerama (at the ABC Bristol Road) - How The West Was Won with black stripes running down the screen? and The Sound of Music and Around The World in 80 Days in Todd AO at the West End? - ran for years - I think I'm the only person who has never seen The Nun's Story and The Sound of Music all the way through.
 
hi Dav,

I know of Cinerama but never actually seen any films presented in this format. Todd Ao was somehting else I missed and was a collaberation between Film star Richard todd and the American optical Company. Another format was VistaVision.

Cheers Bill
 
Bill Parker said:
experimental Stereophonic broadcasts the BBC did back in the Late 50s/early60s ?
Click to expand...
Hi Bill - I listened to those broadcasts on Saturday mornings.
I also remember watching 3 D films through polarised glasses. I think the film was 'Phantom of the Opera' maybe at the Bristol Cinema - memory might be letting me down - film name and cinema !
oldmohawk:)
 
Bill Parker said:
hi Dav,

I know of Cinerama but never actually seen any films presented in this format. Todd Ao was somehting else I missed and was a collaberation between Film star Richard todd and the American optical Company. Another format was VistaVision.

Cheers Bill
Click to expand...
I always thought ToddAO was invented by Mike Todd, one of Liz Taylors husbands, didnt he die in a plane crash, Bernard
 
oldMohawk said:
Hi Bill - I listened to those broadcasts on Saturday mornings. I've previously mentioned my stereo experiments in this thread post #35
https://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17320&page=3&highlight=stereo
I also remember watching 3 D films through polarised glasses. I think the film was 'Phantom of the Opera' maybe at the Bristol Cinema - memory might be letting me down - film name and cinema !
oldmohawk:)
Click to expand...


Just read your post Mow,

Hurst St was a super place for browsing and admiring radio and Hi-Fi equipment that i could not afford! Eventually I has sufficient cash to go to ermmmm was it RSC ? and were they in the great WQestern Arcade? This was in the late 1960s and my first stereo consisted of a Goldring lenco deck armstrong tuner/amp and wharfedale super 8 RD/DD speakers in home made enclosures built to wharfedale plans.
 
My Dad being an electrical engineer was mad on any new formats of sound. He built a stereo system in our dining room. There were massive speakers built into the two corners, with boxes on the top which I was informed were tweeters.....what ever that was?. I remember the radio broadcasts and there were records as well. My dad had a special one he loved to play which was an introduction to stereophonic sound. We would sit in the middle of the room and he would play the record which as I remember was a train. It was quite scary as it sounded like it was running through the house then it would stop and you could hear the doors slamming on either side of the room. I remember many a night after being put to bed trying to sleep through the 1812 Overture while he tested his equipment. My cousin who is the same age as me mentioned it the last time I visited him, it must have had an impact on both of us. I remember playing my first Beatle record on Dad's stereo and being so disappointed because it was mono.
Mom and Dad went to the premier of How The West Was Won we couldn't shut them up about how fantastic it was...........great memories!
 
Yes, Todd-AO was developed by Mike Todd and the Anerican Optical company as a rival format to Cinerama. Todd was one of the pioneer developers in Cinerama but left the company before it's first film was launched, to form the Todd-AO company.
His goal was to develop a high-definition, very large screen format that ran off one projector, thereby eliminating the seams in the Cinerama format.
The Todd-AO company, after various commercial transformations, has become Panavision.

I now live in Yorkshire where Bradford is the home of the National Media Museum. The museum operates a commercial luxury cinema, next door to the main building, that houses a complete Cinerama installation, of which there are only three remaining in operation in the world. The system was restored from parts sourced worldwide and has been brought up to date with modern electronics to improve the synchronisation between the three projectors and the separate track that carries the stereo-sound.

On the first Saturday afternoon of each month, they show a Cinerama presentation, that includes the famous roller coaster ride that gave audiences the same thrills as the real thing when it was first shown. Todd-AO copied the roller coaster ride, using the same roller coaster, for a promotional trailer for Around the World, but it did not have the same impact as the Cinerama version. The museum also annually holds an international film festival that includes several full Cinerama films including How The West Was Won.
 
Dav,
we did the bradford museum some years ago and i wish it was a bit nearer, I did not realise Todd-AO became Panavision. It can get confusing as I believe Panavision Like Cinemascope is normally a "stretching" of the image via anamorphic lenses .

One the other hand there was and Pavavision 70 that I assume used 70mm film. Ita all very very interesting anyway. I do know that the term "Widescreen" was a non anamorphic way of making a standard 4.3 aspect ratio film a better fit for a Cinemasope screen by masking the top and bottom and using lenses on the projector with a shorter focal length. Yet the term "Widescreen has a totally different conertation when refering to a TV screen.

All fascinating stuff nevertheless
 
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