Fred’s Head from APH, a Blindness Blog

Fred’s Head, offered by the American Printing House for the Blind, contains tips, techniques, tutorials, in-depth articles, and resources for and by blind or visually impaired people. Our blog is named after the legendary Fred Gissoni, renowned for answering a seemingly infinite variety of questions on every aspect of blindness.

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Thursday, November 29, 2018

Throwback Thursday: Talking Book Technology

The TR-1000 phonograph had a boxy gray case,
a bright aluminum tone arm, and foam on
its aluminum turntable.
We have more computing power in our pocket cell-phones than the computers used to take Americans to the moon.  The guts of those handy devices rely on small components called transistors that keep getting smaller and smaller every year.  Transistors replaced earlier vacuum tubes, which were power hogs, less reliable, and heavy.  Our object this week is pretty bulky, I guess, but it still took advantage of transistor technology.  This is the TR-1000 Talking Book phonograph, a new design developed at APH in the late 1960s. The special tone arm was developed in the laboratories of the E.F. Andrews Foundation. It was the first transistorized player produced for APH, and used a compact "polyfoam-type" speaker stored in its lid. It was offered both with and without an electronic speed control.  It was our workhorse model and was available from 1970-1990.
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