The Phrog-O-Phone's mechanical ancestor is the infamous Goatophone Talking Machine, invented in 1904 by a Mr. Bezoar Stone of Woolsock County, Delaware. However, as a portable version, the Phrog-O-Phone has a small inflatable resonator under the chin of the frog much like the celluloid resonator of a Kameraphone box portable.
The Goatophone had the horn on top, achieving the rudimentary stereo effects of the Edison Polyphone as any self-respecting goat is equipped with two horns. Single-horn prototypes were attempted but remain a collector's unicorn to this day. The expiry of the Victor patent in 1912 led to the expiring of several goats consequent to the development of the Goatrola internal-horn model, which failed to catch on for unknown reasons. Though the sound was advertised as uncannily realistic, the Goatrola and Goatophone machines were known as uncanny most often for other reasons.
Surviving Goatophone Disc Records are single-sided efforts pressed on a noisy but otherwise unremarkable black shellac. Titles include:
"Sheep May Safely Graze," by Homer Rodeheaver,
"A One in a Million Shot, Doctor--Comic Monologue" (unnamed vocalist),
"Just a Twilight Rumination" by a Miss Elsie Borden on Stroh viol,
"Pastoral" Symphony No. 6 by Beethoven, condensed into a single side of a 10" record and played by a banjo orchestra,
"Uncle Josh In Lambing Season" by Cal Stewart,
"When the sheep are in the fold, Jennie dear" by Manuel Romain,
a presumably pirated copy of "My Uncle's Farm" by Golden & Hughes,
and an Ada Jones rendition of "Oh, You Kid."
The Goatrola was one of the few machines where adding an internal horn did not help sales at all, but though unpopular it still sold better than the Goatrola prototype where the crank exited what is now the internal horn location. Both the prototype and the production model retained the same dead dull stare.
Rams typically formed the base for Goatophone products, supplied as surplus from prototypes of the Dodge Brothers "Ram" light delivery currently under testing by Dodge Brothers motorcars as a side project as Horace & John Dodge were interested in ending their contract with Henry Ford by 1914. During WWI the Goatophone plant sent machines over, and, in the hands of the Canadian army, they ended the Christmas ceasefire when one of the Canadian troops sent an operational Goatrola across no-man's-land and into the German trenches. Immediately the shooting resumed.
Extant examples of Goatrolas and Goatophones have aftermarket Orthophonic-type reproducers as the original reproducers were removed in the late 1920s and sold for mass-marketed supplements to boost hair growth and general virility.
One of these machines, last owned by Ed & Lorraine Warren of Monroe, Connecticut, surfaced on eBay. Due to the service history of this Goatrola (note the wooden leg, needed after the Battle of the Somme) this Goatrola currently is the center of a hot custody dispute between the Smithsonian, the National WWI Museum, and the Walter Potter Memorial Society of Taxidermists.
- Goat-o-phone 1.jpg (36.72 KiB) Viewed 1046 times
- Goat-o-phone 2.jpg (60.41 KiB) Viewed 1046 times
(I had to see this & now so do you.) 
