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Philips EL3302 Cassette Recorder
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DUSTY ARCHIVES
Kyoto S600 8-Track Player 1970?
The natural home for the
8-track player was in the dashboard of a car but a few, like this Kyoto S600
were designed for home use, and the slightly kinder environment did mean the
tapes lasted a little longer, but not much… This player is about as basic as they come with just the standard track change button, four track indicator lamps, volume, tone and balance controls. It is mains powered and the only other connections to the outside world is a headphone jack on the front, and two phono sockets on the back, for connection to a pair of small speakers. There’s no on/off switch, pushing a cartridge into the slot turns it on. It’s housed in a real wood case (well, laminated chipboard...) and a little label on the back boasts 12 transistors and 8 diodes. It really works, though the track change mechanism could probably do with an overhaul, and the case needs a good polish but even after all these years the sound is surprisingly good on the small handful of cartridges I have in my collection, though, because of their age I’m reluctant to play them too often. What Happened to it? The big problem with 8-track
cartridges was the single-reel ‘endless loop design, which puts a lot of strain
on the tape, and the drive mechanism, but it’s big advantage over cassette was
that there was no need to rewind the tape, and you could switch tracks (4 x
stereo) at the press of a button, though without any means to fast-forward or
rewind you usually had to wait to hear a favourite tune come around. I haven’t been able to find out much about the Kyoto brand, which sounds Japanese but the ‘Made in’ label on the back says Taiwan. I suspect it quietly disappeared in the 1980’s, especially if manufacturing 8-track players was its only business because that’s when the format finally died out.
8-Track lingered on in the US for a few years but it was killed by the smaller, cheaper, more convenient and yes, more reliable compact cassette. 8-Track never had any real impact on the home hi-fi market so players like this are probably quite rare. This one was found at an antiques fare and it cost £15 with half a dozen cartridges, of which two actually worked. This is definitely a technology worth collecting, prices are still very low and if you can get hold of some tapes home players like this one are fun to play around with. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1970? Original
Price
£25? Value Today? £15 Features:
Volume, Tone, Balance and Track change
button, 12 transistors, 8 diodes, headphone jack and speaker output Weight: 2.8kg Dimensions: 260 x 230 x 110mm Made in: Taiwan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Binatone Digivox ‘Digital’ Alarm Clock, 1975?
I reckon the Binatone Digivox Digital bedside
radio alarm clock came out sometime in the mid 1970’s but I’m happy to be
proved wrong. My reasons for that date are simple; the word ‘Digital’
was becoming a buzzword following the
appearance of digital watches and calculators. The brown 'mockwood’ case is classic
mid-70s design feature and at that time Binatone were a canny bunch and no
doubt thought this was a quick and easy way to hop on the bandwagon, because as you can see, the word Digital is being used somewhat
loosely… The clock display is
actually mechanical; the numbers or digits are printed on little hinged panels,
attached to a rotating reel, and they flip over as the reel turns.
It’s driven by a highly accurate synchronous electric motor, but the point is, no digital
technology is involved anywhere in this product, not in the clock and
definitely not in the 3-band AM/FM radio. Feature-wise there’s not
much to say. The clock and alarm adjuster knobs are on the left (the latter
turns a reel graduated in 15 minutes intervals, covering a 24 hour period, and
on the right there’s two knobs for tuning and two slide switches for waveband
and mode (on/off/mode). The only other refinement is a small
permanently on neon bulb to illuminate the display at night. It’s idiot proof and it works, and there’s no fangled
Snooze button to confuse things. What Happened to it?
As we all know bedside
radio alarm clocks never went away but towards the end of the 70s LED displays
had become so cheap that there was no point making clocks like this anymore so
I’m guessing it wasn’t around for very long.
Pukka ‘digital’ displays became the norm though interestingly even today
most models are no more accurate as this one. That’s because most mains powered
clocks derive their time timing signals from the mains frequency, which is very
carefully maintained at an average of 50Hz over a 24-hour period. This practice
goes way back and has used to ensure mains powered clocks keep good time since the
year dot. This one came from a car
boot sale and it set me back £1.00. After a quick wipe over, a squirt or two of
contact cleaner and a check around to make sure it wasn’t going to burst into
flames, the clock and radio powered up and both ran straight away.
A lot of these clocks were sold though probably not that many are around to tell the tale
so it could be an area for future collectors of late 20th century ephemera, and if
any alarm clock collectors or Binatone experts read this I would really like to be
able to put a more accurate date on it. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1975? Original
Price
£10-£15 Value Today? £1 - £5 Features:
On/off volume switch, tuning, waveband,
clock/alarm adjust & set Weight: 1kg Dimensions: 270 x 135 x 80mm Made in: Hong Kong Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 5
Aitron Wrist Radio, 1972
This one is the Aitron and
don’t be misled, it’s quite a lump – that’s a 50 pence coin next to it -- and
wearing one provided a good workout for the upper and lower arms. Even so, it
is still a remarkable feat of miniaturisation, cramming a 5-transisitor
superhet radio and speaker into such a confined space. Some clever circuitry
and a very unusual 50mm speaker (high-impedance centre-tapped voice coil, for those who
care about such things) means it doesn’t need a final stage audio output
transformer, which saves a lot of space, and it is powered by a single AA
battery, which again is quite a feat considering the power requirements of the
transistors of the day. There are only two controls, on/off volume and tuning, the third larger ‘knob’ is actually the battery cap. The strap is a surprisingly high quality item, made of leather with a plastic protective backing, and it’s sturdy too, this one cleans up like new. What Happened
to it?
The Aitron brand seems to have disappeared without trace though this design did carry on until the late seventies and I have seen pictures of later models with a built in LED watch display. I imagine they are extremely rare and probably worth a few bob by now. Even so very few examples of this earlier model will have survived. Wrist radios have come and gone over the years and I saw one recently in our local ‘Pound’ shop, though it was only capable of driving an earphone. The concept also survives in wrist and arm bands for devices like the iPod, though again they are geared to personal playback through ear and headphones This particular example was bought from ebay a while ago for the princely sum of £3.00. It is in excellent condition and works well, though there doesn’t seem to be much to listen to on the medium wave these days. Needless to say it sounds a bit tinny and the volume isn’t much to write home about, but for personal listening, under the bedclothes (it's what we did back then...) it’s great! GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1972 Original
Price
£10-£15 Value Today? £10-£20 Features:
On/off volume switch, tuning Weight: 0.12kg Dimensions: 55 x 75 x 28mm (excluding strap) Made in: Hong Kong Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Sinclair Cambridge Calculator,
1974 (Manual)
Although adding machines and later calculators had been around long before Clive Sinclair got in on the act, few could afford them, let alone lift them… The Sinclair Cambridge was the first affordable pocket calculator, though it’s debatable how many ordinary folks could afford to lash out £43 on one of these gizmos, equivalent to several hundred pounds in today’s money. Kit versions were also available, though I seem to remember they didn’t hang around for very long since like most Sinclair DIY kits, they had a tendency not to work. The Sinclair Cambridge, and this is the later Mk 3 version, had just four functions (add, subtract, multiply and divide, plus a Constant (K) functions, which is a very crude sort of memory, but just being able to carry out calculations to 8 decimal places, on a little box that would fit in a shirt pocket was nothing short of miraculous. Sadly build quality was up (or down) to Sinclair’s usual standard and they could be quite unreliable, and the keys were such a loose fit that they rattled, but hey, this one, picked up from ebay for £20 still works, even if you do need a magnifying glass to see the display. What Happened To It? For a few years Sinclair did quite well with calculators and later models featured increasingly complex scientific functions but inevitably manufacturers in the Far East started churning them out at prices that home-grown manufacturers like Sinclair couldn’t compete with. In any event, by the late 70’s Sir Clive had started turning his attention to computers and within a couple of years calculators had become basic commodity items and therefore of little interest to most people. This one came with its original felt carry case and instructions, which is quiet rare. Quite a few of them were made, so they’re not too difficult to find but runners are a bit thin on the ground, and if you’re in the market for one make sure you check the battery compartment as a leaky battery will destroy the innards. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1973 Original
Price
£43 Value Today? £25 Features:
8-digit LED display, 4-functions plus
Constant (K) Weight: 50g Dimensions: 111 x 50 x 28mm Made in: England Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 6
Hitachi WH-638, 2 Band 6
Transistor Radio 1967
Hitachi, along with Sony and Pioneer built their reputation and future
global brand on humble transistor radios like these, though they were often
outsourced to smaller companies and quite often the same chassis would turn up
under a variety of different names. This one is a typical 6-transisitor
(germanium type) superhetrodyne design with one densely packed, hand-assembled
circuit board crammed full of coils, capacitors and resistors, and drenched
with a liberal dollop of wax and varnish, to stop anything moving around. These
circuits were so sensitive that any movement of the components would throw the
tuning off bonk. It’s powered by a single 9 volt ‘PP3’ type battery and has just three
controls, for on/off volume, tuning and wave selection (on the back). There’s
an earphone socket (3.5mm, mono, of course) on the side and it would have come
with an earphone and a carry pouch, which fitted, on the leather case carry
strap. They were very solidly built, and apart from a crackly volume, this one
works fine, with the characteristic tinny sound coming from the 3-inch
speaker. What Happened To It? Pocket two-band trannies
continued well into the 70s then gradually models with higher quality FM
reception began to take over. The development of more efficient silicon
transistors and then micro chips meant radios could be made smaller, cheaper
and more reliable, and by that time cassette tape had become established but
the magic of listening to Luxembourg, then the offshore pirates under the
bedclothes had disappeared and I guess we all grew up…. This one came to me
courtesy of ebay for a couple of quid or around a third of the price of the
postage, and as an added bonus it came with it’s original leather case, which
is also in very good condition. Technically it’s nothing special, nevertheless,
I really do think 60’s radios are a seriously underrated as collectibles and
examples in good condition can only increase in value so get in quick, before I
buy them all up! GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1967 Original
Price
£10? Value Today? £5 Features:
On/off volume switch, tuning, MW/LW,
earphone socket Weight: 0.3kg Dimensions: 130 x 77 x 35mm Made in: Japan Hen’s Teeth
(10 rarest): 3
Philips EL3302 Cassette Recorder 1968
Two thumbwheels on the side
control output volume and recoding level and beside them is a bank of sockets,
for the supplied microphone, line input and output and an external speaker.
This was, perhaps the most annoying aspect of this machine in that it used DIN
type sockets, rather than the near universal Jack connectors used on virtually
every other audio device at the time. Philips and its then partners Grundig
stuck grimly with DIN connectors until well into the 80s, much to everyone’s
annoyance… This was a mono machine –
stereo cassettes were still some way off
-- and the sound through the built in speaker wasn’t very good but hook
it up to an external speaker or a hi-fi system and it didn’t sound half bad.
Build quality was excellent and the only thing to go wrong was the rubber drive
belt, but these were (and still are) cheap and readily obtainable. What Happened To It? The EL3302 and its many variants were produced until the early 70s when they were replaced with much cheaper (and nastier designs) and eventually this type of large portable or table top cassette recorder gradually declined in popularity as the personal ‘Walkman’ style of player took off and cassette decks were integrated into stereo systems and car radios. After almost 45 years the cassette is now dying out, a remarkable achievement for such a simple technology, and it will be sorely missed, even if it was noisy and unreliable. Recorders like the EL3302 are very thin on the ground now and could become a very decent investment, especially if you can find one in good condition, with its original leather carry case and microphone. GIZMO GUIDE First seen: 1968 Original
Price
£18 Value Today? £10 Features:
Fast forward and rewind modes,
level/battery meter Weight: 0.4kg Dimensions: 200 x 115 x 55mm Made in: Austria Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 5
Chinon 722-P Classic Super 8 Cine, 1973
The Chinon 722-P Classic featured here is a prime example; it’s a mid-range ‘family’ model that uses Super 8 film cartridges, developed in the 1960s. As the name suggests the film used is 8mm wide, each cartridge holds 50 feet of film, enough to 3 minutes and 20 seconds of shooting. This model has only a handful of controls, the start/stop button on the handgrip and zoom rocker on the top. There’s also an on/off switch on the side and a battery test button on the top, and that’s it. Just load four AA cells into the handle, pop in a film cartridge, frame the shot in the optically coupled viewfinder and press the Start button. Everything is automatic and the only decision you need to take when to start and stop recording. When the film is finished you send it off to be developed. The more adventurous, and those making, shall we say more exotic sorts of films, could develop them at home, usually with nothing more complicated than a bucket and a bottle or two readily available chemicals. The real problem was cine came when the film was returned and the need to mess about setting up a screen and a projector. On the plus side editing was really easy, all you needed was a pair of scissors and some sticky tape. Another major advantage of cine, that’s been long forgotten in the age of video, was that with so little filming time to play around with the need to think carefully about each shot meant that each shot counted and little was wasted. The Chinon 722-P is really sturdily made, very well balanced and since this one is still working faultlessly after more 30 years, you can take it as read that it was very reliable. What happened to it? In a word, video. The first clumsy and overweight portable video outfits appeared in the late 1970s but they were little of no threat to cine. Then in the early 1980s the first camcorders were launched, they were still large and clumsy but by the mid 80s small hand-held models were coming out of the woodwork. Prices fell and by the late 80s cine was dead. Ironically it wasn’t until the mid 90s that video picture quality started to beat top-end cine but it was all over for film. There’s a still a small hard core of enthusiasts and cine cameras are a regular at car boot sales (this one cost me £2.00) so there are plenty of bargains to be had but grab-em quick, they are disappearing fast. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1972 Original
Price
£100.00 Value Today? £15 Features:
2 x power zoom, auto exposure, through-the-lens
optical viewfinder Weight: 0.8kg Dimensions: 180 x 53 x 180 mm Made in: Japan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 4
Until the early 1960s
most tape recorders were found not in the home, but in offices where they were
used as dictating machines. Grundig has been a major
player in this market and over the years has produced some highly innovative
designs, usually based around clever and exotic cassette formats. It’s worth
remembering that before the Philips Compact Cassette took off in the mid 1960s
there were scores of cassette systems in use. This particular model uses
a Cassette 30 pack, is a single-track design that only works in one direction,
as it were, and unlike a reel-to-reel tape or cassette it cannot be turned
over. The tape has to be fully rewound, whereupon it can be used again. It’s an
ingenious design, though, and the end of the tape is attached to a tab, which
slots into a notch on the fixed take-up reel; when the cassette is removed the
tab clips to the edge of the cassette, so it won’t get lost inside. The Grundig Memorette is a bit of a odd-ball design, half cassette, half reel-to-reel, but it’s role as a dictating machine is in no doubt, as can be seen by the chunky styling, idiot-proof controls and features like the linear time-readout meter, showing how much tape had been used, and how much remains. It’s also a portable machine, powered by a battery pack containing three DEAC packs. Incidentally DEAC (Deutsche Edison-Akkumulatoren Company, now owned by Varta Batteries) were pioneers in nickel cadmium rechargeable battery technology back in the 60s, but that’s another story. It’s superbly well built and the mechanical components are a good example of German precision engineering. The electronic too are a sight to behold with the innards dominated by a large printed circuit board sporting pairs of OC71 and the rare 0C74 germanium transistors. This particular example is in excellent condition and almost certainly works, though the re-chargeable pack has long since expired and until I can find a circuit diagram, to find out what its voltage requirements are I’m reluctant to power it up. What Happened To It It’s a toss-up whether
electric typewriters and word processors or the Compact Cassette consigned
dictating machines to the dustbin of history. True, you can still buy
voice-recorders, but this weighty machine and its ilk belongs to a bygone era,
of secretaries and typing pools, when it would have been unheard of for a boss
or middle manager to actually master the complexities of a typewriter. Dictating machines were
usually high quality items and expensive too, they were also made in
comparatively small numbers so they are fairly rare. Nevertheless this is a
largely unexplored sector of the collectible electronics market and there are
still some real bargains to be had, but maybe not for much longer… GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1968 Original
Price
£100.00 Value Today? £10.00 Features:
Cassette tape, record, playback, remote
control, retractable carry handle Weight: 2.8kg Dimensions: 150 x 260 x 80 mm Made in: Germany Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 5
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I always remember my old
mate Mick, back in the mid 1970s, during a heated debate over the virtues of
8-track versus compact cassette, telling me that the quarter-inch tape inside
the cartridges must give a ‘bigger’ sound than the 1/8th inch tape in compact
cassettes. All I knew is the damn things never lasted more than half a dozen
plays, which is why I quickly gave up on the format.
Normally I can date a
gadget fairly precisely, usually to within a year or two, but I freely admit to
guessing the age of this one. 
A wristwatch-sized radio
was the sort of gadget youngsters back in the 60s and 70s would have given
their eye-teeth for. Transistors had revolutionised radio design but the idea of having one so tiny that you could
strap it to your wrist was pure science fiction. Yet, amazingly,
there were several models, including a variant of the infamous 
It’s impossible to overstate the impact electronic
calculators had on us all back in the 1970s, until that point if you wanted to
do a complex calculation, and by that I mean anything that didn’t involve the
times tables, you had to resort to fearful things called Logarithms, master the
intricacies of the mechanical slide rule, be employed in an office or very well
off and own an adding machine. 
In the same way that personal media players and mobile phones are
standard kit for today’s teens, then back in the 60s you were nowhere man
unless you had a tranny. Most of us had to put up with fairly basic cheapie
pocket size medium wave jobbies but if you had rich parents you might have one
of these, a 2-wave MW/LW model. It was a bit like owning a no-nameMP3 player
when all of your mates had 4Gb iPods… The thing about long wave reception was
that it allowed you to hear Radio Luxembourg a whole lot better than the
notoriously unreliable medium wave signal on 208 metres.
Philips invented the
Compact Cassette format in 1963 and it was an almost immediate success, quickly
overtaking reel-to-reel machines and ousting the many rival cassette formats
which were appearing at about the same time. The EL3302 was one of the very
first machines to use the new format and it was the first cassette recorder I
ever owned. This one, bought recently on ebay for a fiver, is a slightly later
model as it has a clear plastic cassette lid but otherwise it is identical with
the same three-way transport switch, press to record button and recording
level/battery meter.
I have to admit straight away that I never got on with
cine. It always seemed to involve a lot of time, effort and expense for very
little result. There’s only so much you can cram into a 3-minute home movie and
in most cases it’s just a few wonky shots of kids cavorting on the beach.
Nevertheless, I absolutely love the mixture of precision mechanics and
technology, and it came to a peak in the seventies, just before it was killed
stone dead by video.
It’s tempting to think that
tape recorders have always been about recording music and entertainment but the
real driving force behind the technology is more mundane.