1992.9

Mark 1, Clarke and Smith tape reproducer

Clarke and Smith

(.1) Mark 1 talking book reproducer; wooden case, oak faced plywood, orange finish, hinged lid, carrying handle on side; speaker grill, volume knob, and headphone jack on front of case; gold-enameled aluminum deck on top, on-off switch on left, drive gear in middle above two pins that engage corresponding holes in cassette, and below two black rubber brackets that guide placement of cassette; weight approx. 25 lbs; (.2) roughly pentagonal gold aluminum cassette with rounded top, taped with paper label, "Dead Men Don't Ski, by Patricia Moyes.

H-9.646 W-13.386 D-14.37 inches

ca. 1965

Clarke and Smith

Great Britain

John Clarke and Alec Smith founded a radio repair company after WWII in Surrey, England. They developed an early cassette based talking book machine in England in the 1950s. Their half inch metal cassette was bulky and heavy and the player weighed over six pounds even without it. But the idea was innovative and one step on the road to the modern cassette form of the 1970s. The Royal National Institute for the Blind announced in 1960 that its talking book program would switch over from vinyl disk to the C&S cassette. Lighter, smaller plastic versions of the C&S cassette were introduced in 1967. The Mark One was used in Canada from 1963-1968.

APH Collection, 1992.9