sears-roeb: Order= 57K 7057 Ch= 141.418; Silvertone

This set was ondisplay in the movie "The Kings Seech", where Lionel will make a recording from the voice of future king GeorgeVI, played by Colin Firth.

I am wondering if someone can identify the black phonograph at the right...

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• Screen picture of movie (72 KB)

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It's a typical "wind up" (cranked) type portable acoustic gramophone. The pickup horn is built in and the "mouth" is the rectangle across the back. Various people sold adaptors* to feed "P.U." /Gram  sockets on radio. I remember seeing this exact model in mid 1960s, or very like it. I don't remember brand.

It's certainly not a recorder. Though of course recorders did exist.

 

Windup crank visible on front. Internal "horn" mouth is slot at hinge.

Speed control on left and the little pot for needles on right. I presume to collect used needles.

We don't list purely acoustic cranked record players usually. Outside USA a "phonograph" is only a cylinder player, Edison's invention. We call a player of disks a "gramophone".

(*The adaptor takes same needle and apart from a wire is similar appearance fitting on end of arm instead of needle driven diaphragm)

I'm not sure why you added the article under this model?

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hello Michael,

The recorder is clearly the other set, the Silvertone. I don't know if you saw the movie, but the 'language doctor' Lionel even mentions the brand name Silvertone. He uses the black gramophone at the right to play back some classic music into  the headphones worn by king George VI, while he is trying to read some text into the recorders microphone, as part of the therapy. After the session, the King receives the record as a souvenir.

My point was to show the Silvertone radio, as used in the movie.

You can notice that two rotary buttons are probably not original!

Another thing I remarked is that the database situates the radio in 1941/42, but this scene plays the mid 30ies.

Best regards
Georges

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• Silvertone (67 KB)

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Hello Georges,

unfortunately, there is no brand logo visible, and the illumination of the scene is rather bad. There is a plethora of such devices, from the 1920s to the 1950s, and the design is outright standard too. In my opinion there is virtually no chance of identifying this model.

We've had a discussion in German about prop accuracy, see this thread.

In the movie, the scene takes place before the Christmas radio address of 1934. That would clearly not fit with the Silvertone model that was used in the scene. The state of it is also quite poor (extensive usage, missing knobs, damaged celluloid scale). All in all, a poor choice.

On a side note, the movie suffers from severe historical inaccuracy anyway, the actual work with "Bertie" began already in 1926 and great progress had been achieved within months rather than years. Their work together continued however over the war years, so at some point in time, a record cutter might have actually been used.

Based on the models we have in our database, more suitable models for the year 1934 would have been the RCA RAE84 or Telefunken Ela T35. We don't list any such devices prior to 1930(??).

If the technology was there since the beginning of the 1930s, I wonder why we don't show British models with a record cutter for that time period. The UK models we have are the EMI Emidicta, and two versions of the Thermionic Recordon. All of them in 1950(??). We also list 3 models for Australia (Electrosound 82R and 6PR, and Weldon ACR666).

Kind regards
Mark Hippenstiel

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There were UK "78" recorders for home use in mid 1930s  (not sure if earlier).

There are even some surviving recordings of early 22 line TV transmissions (on MW & LW AM radio transmitters after Radio closedown).

I think they used an aluminium foil with a pre-pressed blank groove on some sort of backing disk. The special head/needle driven by the domestic radio, I think no electronics.

The FJ Camm recorder may have been published originally long before the 1950s. It used a guide disk like some 1950s commercial dictation recorders.

I think some 1930s portable machines used waxed blanks (not domestic). I presume these then had to to be "processed" back in the office to make a playable disk.

Is this USA  1938 machine the earliest Presto we have?

The very early years are a little sketchy but the Presto Products Company was founded in 1915. They produced the Sonora phonograph and other equipment, and a 3 pound head for embossing on aluminum blanks, state of the art at that time, in 1931.  They were out of business in 1932, and emerged later as the Duall Company in 1932, and became Presto Recording Corp. in 1933.  The first advertisement for a Presto disc was Oct 15, 1934. (1)

from  www . televar . com / grshome / Presto . htm
(take out spaces to see if link is alive).

P.S. I slightly misunderstood the original post. I don't think anyone would have used headphones with that record player though.

A member here loned some AR88  WWII era radios to "Folye's War" production. They wanted specific models and condition. Some productions are careless with historic detail (Downton Abbey) and others very careful. The Enigma book has some authentic Listening post descriptions and the film seemed to have "correct" radios too. Seems strange that the "King's speech" used poor Radio props, but I haven't seen it, perhaps it's not important or significantly noticeable unless you look out for it?

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