Portable Phonographs

[Raphael]

I went back to the movie and took photos from a couple of scenes showing the portable. They aren’t great, but can anyone identify it?

Raphael

[CarlosV]

I went back to the movie and took photos from a couple of scenes showing the portable. They aren’t great, but can anyone identify it?

Raphael

Looks like an HMV101, which did not exist in 1909 (it started to be produced in the mid 1920s).

[Inigo]

The needle is almost against the grooves, ready to scrap them out!

[epigramophone]

In 1909 small "hornless" machines, some with carrying handles and/or fitted carrying cases were advertised as portables, but the suitcase style portables with which we are all familiar did not appear until about 1912. The Decca of 1914 was probably the first of this style to require no assembly before it could be played.

A detailed article on the history of portables by Christopher Proudfoot appeared in the CLPGS Magazine "For the Record" No.29, Spring 2009.

Roger, when the Columbia portables started to be marketed? I remember reading somewhere that it was around 1910, but never found documentation about it, as happens with everything related to Columbia.

UK Columbia's first portable was the No.10 of 1924/25, modified within months as the 10a.

[alang]

The Music Trade Review from June 15, 1922 shows an add for the new Columbia Portable Grafonola which had the horn in the lid and the tonearm suspended from the lid, so at least in the US the first Columbia portable was released in 1922.

Andreas

[OrthoFan]

The gramophone they used as a prop is off by about 20 years into the future.

That would be about the same as making a movie set in 1940, showing Winston Churchill talking on a slimline touch tone phone.

OrthoFan