617     September 27, 1965 (Taped June 28)
Jayne Meadows, Bill, Bess, Henry

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).