Apr 14
Portable Music Players from the 1920s/30s, and the Original Cameraphone
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When the iPod came out in 2001, its first slogan was “5,000 songs in your pocket.” The Mikiphone’s slogan from nearly 80 years earlier was “An orchestra in your pocket.”
The Mikiphone was a portable record player manufactured by a Swiss company in 1924. It folded up into a circular tin roughly the diameter of a CD, and it wasn’t a pop-it-open-and-play affair; the thing required assembly. It was powered via handcrank and didn’t have a speaker, but something called a “resonator” to amplify the sound. Still, it could play records up to 10 inches in diameter and it must have been the most mind-blowing gadget of 1924.
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