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What is the most unusual find (record or otherwise) you have pulled out of a new box of records?

For me so far, it has to be a partial set of the Marconi-Victor Wireless Telegraph Series, a 1917 set of instructional disks for the wireless telegraph.

Lesson No. 5 - Marconi Press Dispatch has a catchy beat. Someone could do a dance-techo remix of it.

https://archive.org/details/78_marconi- ... ia0003829c

I really do not know what to do with these disks.

Use ‘em to learn the code!

Possibly a pair of records with the recording of a marriage, with a speaker describing what's going on, the dresses of the ladies, then come the church bells, etc. Apparently some recording facility offered this type of service here in town. It's quite peculiar that I keep these records of an unknown couple, while their dear relatives decided to lovely dump them.

Later I have also found a pair of cardboard postcards that are plastified and recorded on one side. Items like these may be common elsewhere, but were the first that I happened to see over here.

I got a parakeet-training record, with the cover showing a drawing of the bird. It consists of a woman repeating the same couple of phrases on each side, and according to the instructions you should leave it playing on and on to your parakeet until either he/she learns to speak or die out of boredom.

CarlosV wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 4:27 am I got a parakeet-training record, with the cover showing a drawing of the bird. It consists of a woman repeating the same couple of phrases on each side, and according to the instructions you should leave it playing on and on to your parakeet until either he/she learns to speak or die out of boredom.

Ha ha !

Very interesting record though ................. "Who's a pretty boy then" ! *

* A conventional phrase used when talking to parrots ........ and maybe parakeet's !!

Probably not unusual, but a Bat Wing Victor 33 1/3rpm. A Victor record with the song "Ring dem bells" on one side and a horse race puzzle recording on the other - doesn't show up in any discogs. A dated 1894 (recording date) Berliner record.

PeterF wrote: Wed Jun 28, 2023 9:39 pm Use ‘em to learn the code!

I assume the code is Morse Code.

Been there. Done that. Bought the t-shirt, too, but it doesn't fit anymore--not sure if I even have it anymore.

To get a certain badge, I had to learn "the code" in Cubs or Boy Scouts long ago, seemingly now in some distant galaxy. My cousin, who had also received the Morse Code badge and who had also received a pressed tin, Japanese-made, battery operated toy telegraph set for Christmas one year, would set it up between floors, at family gatherings, the connecting wires between key sets running down staircases, around corners, and so on (this long run-on sentence mimics the telegraph set setup). Then with groups of cousins on each end, we would, for our childish/puerile amusement, transmit rude/filthy jokes back and forth. Knock Knock jokes were generally the easiest, because they were short and somewhat predictable. We quickly learned to avoid the long, convoluted, tedious groaner campfire-story jokes.

I have had no occasion in the very long stretch of my life since to use Morse Code.

Especially for the occasion and in the spirit of nostalgia, I have concocted a bad but clean joke.

-.- -. --- -.-. -.- -.- -. --- -.-. -.- .-.-.- .-- .... --- .----. ... - .... . .-. . ..--.. --. .-. .- -. -.. -- .- .-.-.- --. .-. .- -.. -- .- .-- .... --- ..--.. --. .-. .- -. -.. -- .- .--. .... --- -. . -.-.--

Secret Decoder Ring Here:

https://www.morsetranslator.com

As for the Marconi-Victor disks .... they are seemingly useless as instructional materials without the paper manuals that presumably went with them. Historical curiosities only.

Ok that wasn’t too bad of a joke, all things considered.

I had become a licensed amateur radio operator at age 11, and thus had a considerable advantage over my Boy Scout chums when it came time to do Morse code stuff. I still know it, more than 50 years later and having not been on the air for at least 40 of them. My best friend is someone I met on the air as a kid, across town, and we still use it when we don’t want our spouses (or others) to know what we are talking about!

The records are definitely not useless as-is. One can use them as receiving practice! That’s what I did when I played the snippet you posted.

My friend is still an active ham operator, and we visited him at his ham club’s Field Day event this past weekend. This is an emergency preparedness exercise where equipment is set up outdoors, powered by generators, and the operators have a contest to see how many contacts and regions they can work over a 24 hour period.

Everything is so automated now that it leaves me cold. Tune a dial? No, push a button and let it tune itself. Copy or send code? No, let the laptop do it. Next up: tell the AI to put the equipment out in a field via drones, and to compete in the contest for you.

PeterF wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 12:28 pm I still know it, more than 50 years later and having not been on the air for at least 40 of them. My best friend is someone I met on the air as a kid, across town, and we still use it when we don’t want our spouses (or others) to know what we are talking about!

Continuing the veer/tangent off thread topic ...

You might enjoy listening to Barrington Pheloung's theme and incidental music for the Inspector Morse series. He used Morse Code motifs in his compositions for this series, apparently giving clues sometimes to the identity of the yet unknown killer in the incidental music.

https://youtu.be/BEfv6QtYFAM

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-49190169

Returning to the original question, this has to be my most unusual find :