The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

One of my favorite books of all time is Tinfoil Phonographs by Rene Rondeau. Some time ago, Rene converted the book to a PDF file and uploaded it to the Antique Phonograph Society website at antique phono.org

Many of use have the printed version of the book, but the PDF version has COLOR versions of many of the pictures. I'm guessing that the printed book saved cost by using a lot of black and white pictures.

If you are a member of the APS, login and download it. Imagine keeping a copy on your cell phone. Its looks spectacular on an iPad, since it fits the screen just right.

If you are NOT a member of APS, this book alone is worth the cost of membership. I hope Rene doesn't mind me mentioning this, and I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned here before.

Jim Nichol

Thanks for the shout-out.

Yes, back in 2000 (has it really been 25 years????) the cost of color printing was prohibitive. With advancements in technology that cost went down quickly thereafter. I'd love to redo the book with more photos (and better ones) but the amount of work is too overwhelming to consider. As it was, I flew all around the country taking pictures and doing research for the existing edition. But I'm glad to have added some depth to a topic that had previously been glossed over in all books on the history of the phonograph.

I should add that the book is now out of print, but I donated the digital file and copyright to APS to ensure that the information will remain available to future collectors.

Rene, you told me years ago that you couldn't update the pics to color because you didn't have a digital file from the publisher. Apparently that changed at some point?

Jim Nichol

I went back to my old publishing program and inserted scans of color photos wherever I had one, then created a new PDF file.

The book is old enough that I originally shot all the pictures on film and later scanned them. Digital cameras at the time were still pretty crude and low-resolution, so film was the only viable option. The technology changed rapidly in the decade afterward.