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More Portable Record Players: The 1950s to '80s

By Rain Noe - April 15, 2011

in Object Culture

Following yesterday's first look at portable record players (and neat paper record player):

In the 1950s Chrysler experimented with an in-car record player that used custom, super-slow r.p.m. records to avoid skipping and scratching while driving. Speaking of scratching, Chrysler scratched the option after just one year, as the players were unreliable yet required to be fixed under warranty coverage.

By the 1960s miniaturization was well familiar to consumers, as the 1950s had seen a wave of transistor radios coming out of Japan. The Baird Emerson Wondergram wasn't much bigger than a transistor radio, and the form factor has shrunk to become narrower than the record's diameter.

By the 1980s, the cassette tape had rendered the idea of toting vinyl around ridiculous, but that didn't stop Sony from releasing their PS series of portable record players.

Style-wise it was clearly related to early incarnations of the Walkman. As a testament to Sony's engineering, you will still occasionally see these pop up on eBay...in fully-working condition, despite a complete lack of corporate support. They don't make 'em like that anymore, and I mean that in more ways than one.

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Brian

13 years ago

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A bit of a nitpick, but Chrysler didn't completely kill the in car record player. It was available at different times and was offered as an option as late as 1971. (I know this because my first car was my grandmother's 1971 Chrysler Newport and it was listed as an option in the owner's manual.)
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Curtis Honeycutt

13 years ago

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If I ever see one of these at a garage sale, I'm buying it! Who needs iPods?
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