The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Does anyone know what the smallest working cylinder/disk phonograph ever made is?

I would say this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygjzcsqP8ok

As a actual practical machine for a disc it would be a Bing pigmyphone and for cylinder a Columbia Q or Rectorphone.

The Mikiphone might be in the running.

https://youtu.be/fmx-nwetRwI?si=-y6r6ZknjewPiHzR

Well… If you want to be really technical, the queen Mary doll house is the smallest, but was a one off.

If we're talking strictly commercially available mass produced machines then the correct answer of course is the Swiss Mikiphone.

I don't know about cylinder machines!

Perhaps not the smallest, but the most interesting miniature model: Edison Military Phonograph. viewtopic.php?t=5754&hilit=Military&start=20

Shown below at the center of the image at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.

Named the Juno phonograph, this small toy was built by the Juno Phonograph Manufacturing Co. in London, based on patent No. 7594 filed on 23 June 1900 by William Phillips Thompson.
The originality of the Juno is due to its horn consisting of a yellow celluloid horn, on the basis of which is fixed a sapphire by means of a small iron clamp. In order to ballast it and place it on its support, a piece of lead was placed in the tip of the horn.
This tiny phonograph (the length of the base of black sheet measures 10 cm), plays interchangeable wax cylinders with a diameter of 56 mm and a width of 24 mm.
The Juno was also sold under the name The Midget, so it could play the identical cylinders of both brands.
Other small cylinder phonographs are described on this page of my site : https://www.phonorama.fr/phonographes-divers-p2.html

Steve wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 2:35 am The correct answer of course is the Swiss Mikiphone.

The Japanese Micky is a little larger than the Swiss Miki - similar names and different designs - but also quite small.

I don't know if this counts, but I think the smallest all mechanical (manual hand crank) "Edison Phonograph" was the one installed in the Edison Talking Doll --

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way ... nightmares

In the CAPS article in the link below, there are a couple of "pocket gramophones" featured which were probably much smaller than a Mikiphone, one described as being "less to carry than a pipe." They seem to have been short-lived novelty items, and it is not known whether any still exist. Advertising may be all that is left.

https://capsnews.org/apn2024-3a.htm