 
CardTalk,
A Simple Talking Machine
By Staff
While
my wife maintains that I "collect anything that collects dust,"
and has become generally immune to the shock of the kinds of things
I cart home from the antique malls, the day that I brought the CardTalk
machine home is even memorable to her.
The CardTalk phonograph record player is the classic definition
of a paradox. While very few collectors know what a CardTalk is,
and even fewer own one, approximately a million have been made and
distributed world wide. Although it is truly a phonograph record
playing machine, it has no moving parts, costs less than a dollar
to manufacture, and has remarkably good sound fidelity. And finally,
it coexists, without fear, with the most complex of sound reproduction
machines in this world of complex electronic marvels.
This amazing little phonograph was developed in the late 1940s by
The World Literature Crusade, a religious organization, to help
it fulfill its mission of spreading Christian bible ministry throughout
the world. The WLC, like many similar organizations, had been successfully
producing and distributing printed literature, but the realization
that many people it was trying to reach were illiterate forced it
into new frontiers. Records were, of course, the obvious solution,
being cheap to produce and distribute and as reusable as printed
materials. But for all their advantages, records were as totally
useless to someone without a record player as printed literature
was to the illiterate. Battery-powered phonographs were impractical
to produce and keep supplied with the necessary batteries, and spring-powered
were too expensive and prone to failure.
Then WLC's Joy Ridderhof thought about the problems in the most
basic terms and decided the only thing truly needed to play a record
was something for the record to turn on and a needle to go into
the groove. This spark of ingenuousness that was to verify the philosophy
that less is better. Thus the handicap of cost restrictions, combined
with inspirations, true engineering genius, and luck contributed
to the birth of the CardTalk machine.
One of the commonest materials available was corrugated cardboard,
which is cheap, easily workable and, ironically, discovered to be
a very good material to reverberate the sound produced by needle.
It was decided that cardboard could be cut into strips approximately
two feet long and eight inches wide, and which when folded twice
formed an 8-inch-square platform for the record to rest on, and
a triangular tone arm and sounding board.
Assembly simply consisted of attaching the needle (at the proper
angle) to a small piece of metal which was then crimped to the cardboard
tone arm. A small sheet of smooth vinyl-like plastic was glued to
the base to provide a smoother sliding surface, and a pop rivet
was used for the record spindle.
Operation was as ingenious as construction and intuitively obvious
to almost anyone immediately. Any 78 rpm record with the proper
groove width, approximately 8 inches in diameter, with a small spindle
hole (or an adapter) could be played on a CardTalk machine. The
record needs only to have a small hole punched about 1-1/2 inches
from the center, just large enough for the power source, usually
a pencil or small pointed stick. The record is then rotated by hand
and the speed is controlled by ear. It is surprisingly easy to maintain
an adequately constant 78 rpm and the sound quality is much better
than many more elaborate and expensive acoustical record players.
The CardTalk phonograph is without a doubt one of the simplest and
cheapest phonographs ever made and its basic simplicity is reminiscent
of the very earliest radios. Although not designed to become a collector's
item, its basic simplicity and functionality make it a very interesting
piece for collectors or anyone who appreciates sound reproduction
and transmission.
©
2002 Mountain States Collector
|
