this is the norelco carry-corder 150 introduced in 1964 by philips it was the first cassette
recorder ever sold in north america and here is a very similar looking portable cassette
recorder from the 1980s by magnavox and another portable cassette recorder from the 90s by sony
but in the 2000s there was a new digital replacement for
the portable cassette player that you've probably never seen before
because if you are a normally sighted individual you're not allowed to have one of these
it's only given out to blind and visually impaired people by the library of congress
this is the model ds1 digital standard talking book player introduced in 2009
there is also an advanced version the da1 with a couple additional features and buttons on it
but you can see it has a very similar size and layout to the portable cassette players
and recorders of the past including the slide out handle on the front
the basic controls are similar to what you would get with a portable cassette recorder or player
you have a play and stop button rewind fast forward a power button tone
and volume there's a sleep timer and also a speed adjustment
but of course instead of taking a cassette tape it takes digital talking book cartridges
i don't have any of those but they would slot into the front here
and they have a finger grip to help you pull them out but if we look into this slot
you can see there's a usb port in there so those digital talking book cartridges are really just
usb thumb drives with a fancy plastic molding on them in fact you can get blank cartridges
for these players onto which you can load your own talking book files and even music
so patrons can either get those talking book cartridges at their library or they can get
them sent to them in the mail or they can get a blank cartridge onto which they can load
downloaded files onto them using their computer and not only that
these machines can also play mp3 files so you can use them as a music player as well
in fact there's a standard usb port on the side there allowing the use of
standard usb thumb drives or in this case ones which look just like a cassette tape
except when you pull it out instead of tape on the bottom has a swing out usb arm which
you can plug into this player and also that's a headphone jack next to the standard usb port
i'm not blind nor are any of my family members so you may be wondering how i was able to get
a hold of one of these well i actually found it for sale at a local thrift store my guess
is this was part of an estate they were cleaning out and selling off the contents of and for some
reason the workers at the store didn't notice this message on the bottom saying that this is property
of the us government and it should be returned to the new jersey state library talking book and
braille center although if they had gone back to them they may have decommissioned it because this
one was made in 2009 and there's a sticker in here saying that the warranty expired in 2011.
also the internal rechargeable battery behind this door no longer holds a charge if this was
new it's supposed to have a battery life of about 29 hours of playing time you can
also see attachment points for shoulder strap it's held together using torx screws
so they don't want average people in here messing around with it
it also has a standard ac power cord for plugging into the wall and recharging there's the sticker
saying it was made in japan and this is a very solid and high quality feel to it
as you expect from government property and there's a look at the battery pack it's a nickel metal
hydride 7.2 volt 2000 milliamp hour battery i believe you can still get replacements for this
all the controls are labeled in braille
and they're also unique sizes and shapes and have recesses and ridges
to help visually impaired people who can't read braille still be able to use it
i plugged it in and now i'll turn it on
"player on press any button to learn about its function" as you can hear all the controls
have voice prompts on them "power battery charge remaining less than one hour power cord operated"
so i have a usb drive onto which i've loaded an audio book i think if i'm careful i can
just about stick it into this recessed slot in the front here where the cartridge is supposed to go
there it detected the cartridge "current position folder one file one time elapsed in file
zero minute" and here we go playing it "something like summer written by jay bell narrated by kevin
r free at brickshop audio inc forward 20 seconds new location within folder 1 file 2 since i was
12 and my best friend kevin moved away to utah i was heartbroken which i suppose forward 20 seconds
forward one minute forward five minutes faced with one of the finest forests in modern suburbia"
the built-in speaker actually has a very good sound to it and has a very adjustable tone range
"a path that disappeared tone down into their tone minimum midst volume up
the trail eternally marred by the criss-crossing grooves left by countless bike riders volume down
snake tone up forth through the trees causing 10 acres of woods to feel like a limit"
now let's try playing some music on this imitation cassette
plug it into the side mounted usb port
"audio files current position folder 1 file one time elapsed in file zero minute volume up"
the only real disadvantage of this model is that there is no direct
track or chapter skip feature instead you just have to hold down the fast forward or
rewind button until you hear a beep and that indicates when you reach the next track
"forward 20 seconds forward one minute new location"
that actually makes it more like a cassette player because
finding the next or previous track is not instantaneous it makes you wait a little bit
and here's a wave file so it supports playing them as well "volume up"
"tone down
new location"
"volume down" here's that speed control "speed speed speed up" it
does not affect the pitch it just changes the speed "speed down"
it doesn't do as well music as it does voice "speed up normal"
i also noticed that if you stop the player by either shutting it off or pulling out the usb
drive and then you start it playing again it remembers where it was and picks up where it
left off and i looked on the drives and it does not save any files on them not even any
hidden files so it must have some internal non-volatile memory to store the bookmarks
now i'll give you a direct hookup through the headphone output
i didn't expect the output to be in stereo because it's obviously not
necessary for audio books but it is and it actually sounds very good
so that's about it for the library of congress model ds1 digital talking book player
the u.s. government's replacement for the portable cassette player
that you're not allowed to have unless you're blind or visually impaired
but you are allowed to have these usb mixtapes there's many different brands and styles of these
on the market today some of them actually look like they contain real tape inside
and they just have a usb drive stuck into them where the playhead would go so i think that's a
neat trick to have a usb flash drive which looks like and is the same size as a cassette tape
"as he jogged past ben the silver eyes rose to meet his mr. blue shoes raised his eyebrows and
nodded in a way that unmistakably said cool before flashing a smile and then he was gone"