Today I'm doing one of my favorite things
Which is covering an unusual old
Recording format, now I've done quite a few videos about these over the years and every now and then someone will get in touch to say
What are you going to do when you run out of them?
well
There's no need to worry about that because when that happens I could just start making them up, after all who's going to believe that
In this box here. I've got a device that can play back recordable
paper, I mean as if that was ever a thing
Right so let's open that case up take the machine out and have a good look at it. This is something
I've been trying to find for a couple of years now in working order and this one's in really good condition
inside the case we've also got some paper for it and the
Microphone and the machine in question is the 3M sound page system. This is an educational tool that made its debut in the U.S. In
1974 now whilst it was sold there by 3M, it wasn't manufactured by them it was imported from Japan
and it was made there by Ricoh. Now Ricoh sold this at home as
well as in some other countries under the name the "Ricoh Synchrofax", now I could find mention of that name going back to
1959 now back, then Rico's business was office equipment and the Synchrofax was launched as an office tool
dictation type device, however, sometime between
1959 and
1974 it found a niche in the educational market and the product was effectively
Relaunched as an educational tool, and that's the version of the machine that made its way to the US in
1974 and sure enough before it found its way into my hands my
3M sound page system was the property of the Oklahoma educational department, right
So let me give you a quick demonstration you open the lid you put your piece of paper on the machine
Close the lid on top of it and press play
It's puzzle time
We're going to fit the words "bat"
"hat"
"fat" and "mat" in stories!
There is a lady in the circus that all the people come to see because she is so
What word fits in my story
Draw a line from the first picture to that word
Did you draw a line from the picture to the word fat? The numeral three is next to the word fat
There is a lady in the circus that all the people come to see because she is so "fat", good!
It's time to clean your windows and finish for today
Now I don't know about you, but that gave me a bit of a creepy vibe
There's something just a little bit unnerving about it, but if you think that's weird just wait til later on anyway
Let's have a look how this works so on this side is just a normal piece of paper, but on the reverse
It's covered in the same kind of material you get on magnetic tape
Now whilst this particular piece of technology might date back to 1959 the idea of coating paper in
materials like ferric oxide and recording on them is nothing new, some of the first open real recorders use paper reels of tape with
special coatings
Perhaps the most unusual thing about this machine is the fact that the paper or
Recording material stays still and it's the recording head that does on a moving, now
This is the speed that it moves up whilst the device is playing
down at the bottom is the record and playhead and as the device rotates this gradually moves in towards the
Center it does this over a period of four minutes
That's the maximum amount of recording time you can get on one page, now when it reaches the end it will automatically return
But if you want to you can manually return it if you were to stop the page at an earlier point
you can fast-forward and rewind and whilst you're doing this the
Recording, if there was a sheet on top of there, would be getting played back
It's designed to be easy to use you can imagine a classroom full of children each one of these on their desks with their headphones
Plugged into it, they'll need
To be able to operate it on their own and the play button in the middle is also the stop button
It's a toggle switch and at certain points in the programs it instructs the user to
Stop the recording to draw a picture or answer a question and then press play when they're finished and when they do press play it
Continues from where they left off
These words all begin with the letters "SH" are your windows nice and clean girls and boys
Girls and boys are your windows nice and clean won't you show me?
Two for one it's lots of fun as you can plainly see
S and H together
make the sound we hear as
"SHHHH"
So say it after me
"SHHHH"
And meet Shelley the shoemaker in his shoe shop
I'm Shelley the shoemaker. I'm short and a little shy
"Shoes"
"Shoestring"
Now show me what you learned
One of the things that fascinates me about these is how good they still sound after all these years just
Imagine how many children have handled these pages roughly?
And they still sound as good as they originally did I'd imagine, now the copyright date on them is
1974 that's not necessarily the date that these were printed
But theoretically they could be that old, now as well as those children's titles and introductions to maths as some more advanced titles here
Let's just have a quick listen to this one
You have heard lots of statements for instance you have heard the statement the earth is round
When scientists first started making that statement most people didn't believe it they thought the earth was flat because it looked flat
They wouldn't believe the earth was round until the scientists proved it
Even though they were wrong about the earth being flat these people were right to want proof
Anybody can make a statement, now whilst I was researching this video
One of the articles I've found
was from this company that had trained people on how to use these devices in
Education in particular they trained people to use them in a detention center
It seems the sound page with its combination of images and audio in an easy-to-use format was something that found itself particularly
suited for educating people with learning difficulties
As well as the prepared programs you could also get your own blank pages
So you could draw or photocopy your information onto one site and record your own audio on the other, now these ones looked blank
But when I put them into my machine, they revealed a bit of a story
I've edited some of it together for you here. Just have a listen to this
the teacher should now say
This picture is to be someone you know very well
So it should be the best of all I want each of you to make a picture of yourself
Your whole self not just your face
While the children are drawing stroll about the room and encourage those who are slow or seem to be having
difficulty by saying
These drawings are very fine. You boys and girls are doing very well
By referring to the attached sheets on some page five we will now begin to score the drawing
Item number one
head present
Any clear method of representing the head features along without any outline for the head itself are not credited for this point
Now look at the drawing
This drawing has a head so place a 1 in a plus in the blank after the one
total up or
Count all the pluses that you have, you should have a raw score of approximately 48
To convert this raw score of 48 to IQ score you will now have to change to sound page
Numbers 8
The idea of those teachers scoring children's IQs based on
Self-portraits of whether or not they drawn a head on them made me feel a little bit melancholy
But then this cheered me up
No ends somehow the kids have managed to get hold of this sound page system
And those old teachers recordings and recorded music off the radio over the top of them. Let's just have a quick listen
the exploration of new items which might increase
[Music Plays]
There are quite a few of these and given the names of the tracks in the artist. I think they all date from
1996 although perhaps the children should have spent a little bit more time practicing their spelling
The records [Inaudible] the greatest hits from
1996 from such top artists as
Alians Morseet
Cleion Dein
Jewl
and Keith Sweat
Also numerous assaulted tracks all with love in the title this compilation is not available in any stores it can only be found on
misappropriated school equipment
Well as the saying goes if you can't beat them join them
It's time to clean your windows and finished for today
Yes make sure you delete those browsing cookies anyway, that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching