Paul Richards from Plymouth, Michigan brings with him an unusual
looking contraption: “It’s a machine that plays the piano”
Richards’
electronic device fits over a standard piano and uses old-fashioned
player-piano rolls to play the keyboard.
The device can also control speed and volume. Richards named his machine Dynavoice and
hoped it would find a niche among the thousands of pianos that sit
unplayed. However, it would only be
marketed for a few years, and today is a collectable novelty. Here, we are treated
to the strains of “Hello, Dolly” (1964).
Ray Newby from Stockton, California: “I was the world’s first
radio disc jockey (in 1909)”
Commercial
radio broadcasting is generally accepted to have begun in the 1920s, but when
both radio and recorded music were in their infancy, Newby and a colleague
“broadcast” an experimental signal to a handful of California hobbyists who had
built their own crystal receivers and who listened to the signal on
earphones. The regularly scheduled
broadcasts included news and music, the latter provided by 78rpm recorded
discs. The recordings were mostly Enrico
Caruso arias, because they were popular in the day, and loud enough to be heard
by the nearby receivers.
Special guest Fred Gwynne tests the
panel on their knowledge of word and phrase origins. Questions include how the Los Angeles Dodgers
got their nickname, and why actors who exaggerate are called hams. Edie Adams would play this game with the
panel a year later (
E657
). Gwynne is in
the second of his two-season run as Herman Munster in The Munsters (1964-66).
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