ABSTRACT

Beginning around 1911 or earlier many inventions were introduced for the purpose of bringing a turntable to a stop at the end of a disc; the reason was to avoid the noise made by the needle as it reached the tail groove. Earliest advertisers in TMW were Sonora and Condon-Autostop Co. The latter’s autostop device required adjustment for each disc, but in 1912 Condon offered the Altobrake, which was self-adjusting. Simplex was the name of a 1912 device by Standard Gramophone Appliance Co.; it could stop the turntable and restart it for a repeat of the record. Edison’s Diamond Disc Phonograph had a Duncan Automatic Stop in models offered from April 1917 to mid-1918 (described and illustrated in Paul 1988). Several similar devices appeared in the next few years, and the Columbia Grafonola player of 1920 had one built in. [Paul 1988.]

SEE TURNTABLE

The first generally marketed cars to be radio equipped appeared in the U.S. in 1930. Equipment was rudimentary and results were poor. No serious attention to the problem of overcoming the auto’s hostile environment was given until the hi-fi revolution of the 1950s. Then audio manufacturers began to deal with the need for miniaturization (to fit into the relatively small space available), for amplification to counter road and engine noise, and for physical toughness of components to withstand vibration and extremes of temperature. Those problems notwithstanding, there are favorable factors present in the automobile that are not usually found in a home audio environment. The listeners are located in fixed positions; reverberation time is short; and there is greater discrimination

against ambient sounds because the loudspeaker(s) and the listeners are so close to each other.