The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Cause some people have hoarding disorder.

The radio would play music in those days, but you had to listen to what the radio station wanted to play. The radio could not be programmed with your favorite songs like an iPod can.

So back in the day people would find a song they liked on the radio, and then buy the record. Then when they got together with friends for a party they would get out the phonograph, and play all of their "favorites", and without any commercials!

I was told by an older person who was an adult in the 1950's that the old hand-crank phonos really started to hit the Goodwills and trash bins when the LPs and 45's came out. People just said well I want the high fi stuff and you can throw out all these 78s! It didn't have much value as collectibles then, he said, just like old cars.

marcapra wrote:I was told by an older person who was an adult in the 1950's that the old hand-crank phonos really started to hit the Goodwills and trash bins when the LPs and 45's came out. People just said well I want the high fi stuff and you can throw out all these 78s! It didn't have much value as collectibles then, he said, just like old cars.

It's always that way. The latest new thing comes along and drives out the old with the majority of people.

Clay

Emerson is so right when he says (She is in "the throw-away era"). I went to purchase a new Lap Top after using this one for 8 years and the new ones are crap. Made to use a couple years, throw it away and get a new one. The Victrola was a piece of furniture in the house and many people just didn't want to get rid of them. Just think of the empty hole where the Victrola set?

briankeith wrote:My 8 year old grand daughter, who loves to listen and play with my photographs...

What are your photographs saying to her? Sorry! I couldn't resist! Well, I could've, but I didn't want to...

Along with what everyone else here says, at that time the radio was more than just music and news, it was soap operas, westerns, children's shows, comedies, variety shows, live broadcasts from here and there. It wasn't seen as a replacement for the phonograph but as another option for home entertainment. Also, lots of folks had attics where you would put things that were no longer useful, but too good to throw away, and many phonographs were put away in them.

Today we can watch movies on our phones and watch television on the computer, but people still go to the movies and still have TV sets in the house.

Recently the children in my 7 year old grand-daughter's class were learning about the history of music, so she announced that her grandad collected old gramophones and records. As a follow up, my son and daughter-in-law visited the school and demonstrated a portable which I had given them. I would have loved to have made the visit myself, but I live too far away.

The children were fascinated that this machine could play a record by purely mechanical means. No plugging it in and no batteries.

Whenever my grand-daughter needs to find out about what she calls "the olden days" guess who she phones? On one ocasion she asked whether there were tablets when I was her age. Yes I said, they dispensed them in chemist shops .

It's a good question! My answers would be: because the sound was better on phonographs; because the radio didn't play greats of the past who were still worth hearing (Caruso, anyone?); and because with a phono you can play what you want when you want to hear it. One the other hand, radio is great when you don't want to flip the record, wind the machine, etc. In fact, the two mediums compliment each other very well.

When I was little, we had a phonograph in the living rooms (78's, with a changer and a radio as part of it), but a radio in Dad's shop. Pretty much what I have now!

Because, back when wind-up phonographs became "obsolete", people were not of a "throwaway" mindset. This has become a disposable society. From diapers, to Swiffer mop heads, to Keurig coffee pods, to yesterday's pop music star, etc., etc. Back then, an item that you paid hard earned money for, that still worked and was a quality thing, made to last 100+ years, was not so easily cast aside. Who could have been so capricious in the post depression era to simply throw away anything that cost what a phonograph did, simply because it went out of vogue. Also, we were much less "fad" oriented back then. Think today of all the perfectly fine working cellphones that get traded in for want of the latest model.

Hi,
My much older cousin gave me all his classical 78 records in about 1950-54 because he could listen to uninterrupted classical music on the new FM radio he bought. He was from Germany and like my mother was close with a dollar (my father said he would squeeze a nickel until the buffalo peed before releasing it). We had, at that time, more than one all classical station today we only have one.
Allen