"It is most gratifying that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated. And so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients… And the fully armed nuclear warheads are, of course, merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives. Thank you."
If they're still at the same address, I wonder what would happen if Techmoan sent them the product registration card, 37 years after the product was released.
I'm imagine that the 'visual' relay would be intended for a slide projector or the like, but this is definitely one of those elegant solutions in search of a problem.
I mean in case of museum usage, which I think was sugested to it could enable the lights of a showcase. Saves power if nobody is there and lights it up when people are interrested. Ofc in this case the visual aspect would be visual in terms of presenting a part of an exhibition to the one interrested.
These were still being used by a classic car dealer on Beach Blvd in Buena Park when I was there in 2007! My Dad and I spent about half an hour one evening, tapping the side windows of the cars, listening to 'Big Bobby' reel off the stats of various Mustangs, Pontiacs and ancient Chevy trucks -)
I truly believe every time a new Techmoan video is posted, the universe realigns us to a timeline where one more obscure audio format or device exists so there will never be an end to potential content.
I think you're right. When I was young no one knew about the walkman. But now I have clear re-memories of them. To think a few years ago the walkman simply didn't yet had existed. Well, what will they did have come up with next.
@@kodinamsinh1267 [Boring humor destroying explanation]: Chad talks about re-aligned realities. I'm continuing his idea with language to describe how a thing didn't exist but then later it did in the same time span because of a sort of reality shift akin to the proposed Mandela Effect. The fun in my comment (that I'm now destroying by explaining this) arises from how language would have to bend to reflect this concept. So the line; "What will they come up with next" must be enhanced if a past (already lived through) suddenly changes. It must include "What did they come up with". [As it is in the past]. The line becomes; "What will they; did have; come up with". My comment includes "my surprise" at my sudden changed memory of a thing. My "re-memory". Because of a recognition that reality shifted. Talking in "re-past tense", is something that does not exist in out current boring reality. Hence the resulting humor at the enhanced language needed to deal with such a phenomenon. You have now been made aware of the potential of the (admittedly minor bit of) humor you may have missed at first glance. Oh and don't worry. No one else seemed to get it either.
Could also be used for museum exhibits. The switching of lighting would come in handy there. Exhibit behind glass, tap the transducer, increase lighting in the exhibit space and play the message.
There are touch things for museums that have far surpassed the capabilities of this. More common is headsets that trigger the appropriate information near to the exhibits, that are more reliable and serve as many people at the same time as need it with full clarity.
@@Safetytrousers There are NOW, yes. This thing, though, is straight out of the 1970s (yes, I know the manual says 1986, but I imagine it had been available for a few years by then). To be honest, - I think they tried to reinvent the wheel. There have been 'push button for info/presentation' systems around since the 1950s, most based on endless loop tape systems. One of the earliest was made by a company called Echo-Matic, and was used in those mechanical 'gypsy/fortune teller' booths at carnivals and amusement parks (they recreated one for the Tom Hanks movie 'Big'). Granted, this is slightly more sophisticated, but not by much.
We fitted something similar but smaller which we plugged into the sound card of pc in the 1990's. It was fitted to estate agents plus other shops and used the glass as the speaker cone. It died out due to double glazing. Ok seen you also had the same problems.
What? Double glasing was not a thing where you live in the 90s? Here in Sweden we had triple glasing in the 50s and single glasing was primitive in the thirties, 1830s!
@@borjesvensson8661 i think hes just getting a bit confused between domestic and commercial glazing, even now its not too unusual for a shop front of a certain age to be single glazed (even in sweden)
They are very old tech, if you think about it it's basically just a regular speaker that uses something else as the speaker membrane, so I suspect the biggest hurdle they had was to create something that was powerful enough to vibrate thicker solids without causing damage to the attached point. People just didn't use them because unless you create the unit specifically for a given surface the sound quality goes up and down depending on what you attach it to.
Actually I remember encountering surface transducers in the late 1960s. Real estate agents were using them when they did open house events. The things looked like the magnet and voice coil, minus basket and cone, of a large speaker. They attached to the wall somehow and used the whole wall as a cone. Quiet "beautiful" music seemed to emanate from nowhere in particular and filled the entire house.
I remember this device when I bought my red 1988 Buick Skylark back in December of '88. I tapped on it but it didn't work. An employee told me the device had run down the battery, so he game me all the car's details. Anyway, I ended up buying that useless car that would give me nightmares for years to come. Only good thing about it was the stereo system on it.
You guys call pharmacists "chemists"?!? That's awesome! I'm getting a serious "Space Hunter" vibe from that. Now, almost no one will get that reference, but I shared it anyway.
With all due respect, speaking as a food delivery person I would hate someone trying to use this to leave delivery instructions. When I'm delivering I'm on the clock. I want to drop off the order and get out so I can be picking up my next one. The last thing I want is to have to fiddle with some gizmo and then wait while it delivers a message. I can read instructions left on a piece of paper far faster than a tape player can rattle off the same message.
I've never been shouted at by a shop window, but I do recall videotext systems --- typically in tourist information offices --- which had a capacitative number pad glued to the inside of the window controlling a CRT information display system. I was always excited to see one as a child and would go and play with it. (I still do, but I did then too.) I imagine they died out due to double glazing too.
@@peanutmans0 I've seen estate agents premises with modern versions of this that are sensitive enough to work through dobule glazing. Looks like it's installed by specialists though, not just put in the window by the agent themselves.
When I saw "Visual" on the box, even before it was opened, and I was wondering what imaging it was have, and then when the box opened, I was even more intrigued. A compact-cassette doesn't have a lot of capacity for "video"! You'd hard pressed to store a still image on cassette! And, of course, it doesn't! I wasn't surprised to see it defeated by double-glazing.
There was a toy camcorder that recorded black & white video onto audio cassettes, the Fisher Price PXL2000. I believe Techmoan has a video on that one.
In the early 1960s there was a "home video recorder" offered for sale in the UK either ready built or as a self-assembly kit. It offered around 30 minutes of recording time on a 10.5" reel of double-play audio tape in 405-line B&W. I have a copy of "Practical Television" from the time that has an article about this recorder in it. I doubt it worked well as it seems to have rapidly vanished without trace. Not that many years later Sony marketed the CV2000 helical scan recorder, also for 405-line B&W for the UK version, which provided an hour of recording on a 7" reel of half-inch video tape and came with its own tuner/monitor for off-air recording and playback.
@@crashbandicoot4everr No, this one was called the VKR500 and was made by a company called Wesgrove Electronics. I've just located the article about it from Practical Television from March 1965. The article does briefly refer to the Telcan video recorder which it says "did not appear on the market" The VKR500 cost £97 10s in kit form or £150 ready built. But I can't imagine it sold well as I've never seen one or heard of anyone who owns one. The CV2000, however, I have come across. Some years back I was asked to recover the video from some off-air tapes recorded on a CV2000, convert the video to 625 lines and re-record it to DVD. It was quite a challenge due to the poor time-base stability of the CV2000, not helped by the fact that the supplied tuner/monitor used mean-level AGC so the amplitude of the recorded sync pulses varied with picture content.
If I'd had one of these at one of my old stores, I'd have probably used it to record jokes or humorous messages for daytime passers-by, and the late night, slightly tipsy city dwellers to enjoy
It certainly seems like the predecessor to those touchscreen advertisements that you sometimes see in stores, particularly in the health and beauty section advertising shaving razors and things like that.
It's basically the spiritual ancestor of an AR phone app, just like _Haunted House_ is the spiritual ancestor of the _Resident Evil_ series. You tap the glass, and something magically comes to life for a moment that would normally just be lying still. Unfortunately, the coolness might have been a factor its own undoing. After all, if the word on the streets is "Hey, down at the mall, they've got this cool gizmo where you tap on the glass and an enormous animated pineapple sings to you!" but all the customers are so impressed by the gimmick that they forget to buy a carton of the fruit juice it was supposed to be advertising, the juice company are going to be looking for a different gimmick to sell the next flavour they think of .....
I could see something like this having a lot of use in museums. They could even conserve power by not having to illuminate the exhibits at all times. Simply have someone walk up to a dim glass cabinet, give a light tap on the glass, and then an audio-visual presentation is played out before them.
Imagine a car dealer has a black Trans Am in 86 with this thing and a voice box connected to it. And when you tab the window it says "I'm the Knight Industries Twothousand or K.I.T.T. if you prefer."
I was trying to fathom what the heck this was for. Thanks for the wonderful hint with the cigarette lighter connector. All the same, I'd never have guessed. I'd be thinking it was to tell people not to break your window, your dog has its favourite tunes and the A/C is turned on.
I would affix this to the driver door window of my car and if approached by a traffic cop tapping on the window the message would play 'please come back later, I am busy driving'. As usual Techmoan makes any subject fascinating. 👍
Reminds me of a Toy Shop Window in My Hometown back in 84. The Window had a Pushbutton top operate a Model Train. And for Christmas Season you also would hear Jingle Bells and Train Noise.
I tapped on this sheet of glass and metal that I'm holding in my hand and you started speaking to me, and I could even see you visually. Isn't technology amazing ;-)
The speaker in the transducer reminds me of the acoustic characteristics of a few toys we had for our kids in the '80s & '90s. One of them was more or less a gramophone, it had a record with a needle attached to this thin plastic cone, directly producing the sound like a speaker cone (but lower quality).
I honestly didn't have much desire to learn about this contraption until I watched the video. It's utterly fascinating!! Almost like the Harry Potter world, where Arthur Weasley is fascinated how Muggles have come up with such great ways to get along without magic...from a year 2022 perspective, it's fun to learn how we managed without all the technical advancements we take for granted today.
I remember, when I was a child, the local toy store sometimes had a model railway in the window. You could make it run for a few minutes by tapping the glass, much like with this device here.
Very neat and interesting device! Some double glazed windows have some quarters, if its your case, maybe if you place just in between can work, so the knocking can be transmitted along the solid material instead of the gas in between the double glazing. I love the "extra connection" in the very last bit of the video, I don't want to spoil anybody...
Unfortunately it relies on window glass to vibrate the sound back so it won't work well enough. At that point just sticking a speaker and a normal button on the outside would do a better job. But that wouldn't be very magical, I guess... BTW probably missed that last bit, timestamp?
I remember ads for this. It seemed practical for leaving instructions for where the food is when mom cooks then works second shift 🥰 it was marketed to place next to your existing answering machine to leave messages for people in the house since you couldn’t call yourself
I saw something similar years ago that was fitted inside Halloween decorations.When someone banged your door it turned on lights and played whatever you had on a tape hidden inside.
Well, at least it works fine on car windows. But the additional light unit would be also quite useful in this case, as you can put the car details sheet on the dash inside and have it light up by the touch of the button, so buyers could read it even when the dealer lot is dark.
I remember interacting with devices like this at some lesser known nature and theme parks in Florida in the 1980s. In particular, Gatorland had one at the ticket booth during closed hours to give general park information and ticket prices.
Very cool. I don't think we give the engineers of yesteryear the credit they deserve for solving problems they encountered in the manner in which they did. I expect this was not an inexpensive unit for the times, either.
Expensive, yes. Dedicated-function 'business/sales' gadgets usually were (and still are!) overpriced, because the manufacturers who make them know most businesses will happily call the expense an 'investment'. As for the engineering... I'm not that impressed. It's just the 'announce' mechanism from one of those old answering machines with a few wizmos tacked on. I know the manual has a date of 1986 printed in it, but everything else fairly screams 1970s at me.
Yes the 'VISUAL' part was intriguing. I was looking forward to seeing a mini VHS cassette player. When the audio cassette appeared in the video, I then thought of the Fisher Price PXL-2000 camcorder lol (same time period) I imagine these units might be used in a museum setting, although, why would anyone want children tapping on glass instead of pressing a button for information? Anyway, very cool vintage tech.
If this happened they'd have to turn down the sensitivity. I was able to set mine off with my voice on its most sensitive setting when it was on the tabletop.
No spoilers, but when you reach a part near the end of the video that you *think* might lead you to a certain something… it will. Techmoan always follows through.
Wonderful clever video and I hadn’t thought about the QR code provenance. Very Techmoan - always ahead of me Matt. Saturdays are essential RU-vid morning now over here in Yorkshire, England.
I believe Mr Techmoan is only a few miles across the Pennines from you in, I think, Wigan. By your use of "over here in Yorkshire, England", I think perhaps you thought he was uploading from The States.
@@grahamlive yes you’re right. My shocking lack of clarity - I suppose I was trying to write to the wider viewing audience many of whom are probably found in the states as well as around the world. I am originally from down the road from him in Ellesmere Port but I escaped at the earliest opportunity. Anyway, apologies for setting off confusion. In any event, its clear that Sir Tech of Moan is streets ahead of most YT channels in production values, interesting content and that little intangible factor that makes his stuff appealing to gen Xers like me.
Mat, since this won't work out with your double glazing, it would be a fun project to put together a system that will work. I'm planning major renovations soon and will be replacing my basic doorbell with a system that plays audio from an SD card through a speaker built into the overhead light fixture. I'll have fun musical doorbell sounds for Halloween and Christmas and a sign I'll stick on the front door telling delivery drivers to press the bell for instructions as I'm out of the house. One instruction will be to put the sign through the letterbox so that potential burglars don't get any ideas!
Back in the 70s and early 80s, my father used to be very active in the "Car Show" circuit. He'd later go on to the custom hot-rod community into the 90s, but this is exactly the sort of thing I could see him having installed in his show-van. Maybe with some sort of history or something, turning on some lamps perhaps. I was actually reminded of an old 'zoo' in the town where I grew up, they had glassed off enclosures for a lot of the animals, and you'd have a sign with a doorbell-button. Pressing the button, a recording would play with information about the animals. I really liked the connection to QR codes. I wish augmented reality markers were better supported. Imagine being able to point your phone at a sticker, and an animated character could give you the information about the item, or just suddenly there's a video right there in place of the token.
I'm a huge fan of the *Wollensak 2873 AV Sync Audio Cassette Player/Recorder* . You plugged a Kodak carousel slide projector into it and you would record your narration/ music onto the tape and the Wollensak recorder would encode with an inaudible trigger tone to advance the slide corresponding to your pressing of the brightly lighted red and green buttons. Some also had a yellow button. Upon playing the tape back the projector would automatically repeat the same cues and advance to the next slide...like magic! The 2873 units had a nice and loud onboard speaker that could fill a classroom or conference room no problem. The units could be daisy chained together so that multiple projectors could project multiple images in different nearby locations. The Steamboat Museum in Marietta, Ohio had a small nook with seating for a small classroom size of viewrs. There were multiple Wollensak 2873 units and a very 1970's wall of big white cubes, each with a medium size image. The sound would follow the projected image for a unique listening experience. I went there in 1976 with my 5th grade class. Years later in 1991 my wife and I visited the museum and they still had the exact same setup! Around 1997 I did experimental AV stuff with a bored fine arts graduate. We had several Wollensak desk reel to reels we made tape loops with. The loops didn't even need the reels on. The pinch roller capstan maintained the motion of the tape. The Wollensak 2873 AV Sync Audio Cassette Player/Recorders were abundant in thrift stores for $7-$8. A very common issue with the 2873 units is the rubber pinch roller was made of a rubber that after 20 or so years into it's life it completely melted into a puddle of sticky tar. Inferior rubber. You could still by the rollers for $10, but I discovered that the *General Electric 3-5016d Portable Cassette Player Recorders* also abundant for $3-$4 had the exact same pinch roller.
Museums tend to use headsets that trigger the appropriate information near to the exhibits, that are more reliable and serve as many people at the same time as need it with full clarity. I'm amazed by the number of people who don't seem to have been to a museum for many years.
The sound of the recording reminds me of the old amusement parks in Germany. There was often a "fairy tale forest" with small show boxes. At the push of a button, you could hear part of a fairy tale in similar quality...
Having had a 1989 Camaro (which was basically the same car as the Firebird), I can tell you that the 0-60 time was about half an hour--pretty respectable for 1989, when the beefiest engine you could get in a GM F-body had the power of 235 not-very-excitable horses. ;) As for the product itself, I think the deco on the transducer and the packaging supports your mid-'80s estimate--I can't think of another time when an electronics manufacturer would have thought of labeling the product in Starfleet Bold.* * I know it's a real font with a proper name, but I mean, c'mon
A device which prevents a consumer from having to talk to an annoying car salesman!? I think I know who killed this product! I can imagine a team of salesmen hovering in nearby shrubberies and, upon hearing a window knock, running like ravenous wild hyenas towards a fresh carcass....
Oh, you 'found it online', eh? I'm thinking maybe you dusted off the time machine to bring back another BNIB tech item. I assume you had to stop using it cause the time travel Police found out..
There were "stereo" versions of these that used one channel for audio and the other channel for tones that controlled lighting, solenoids, etc in a display. Think museums, national parks, amusement parks, haunted houses, etc. The ones I remember had plexiglass panels with screenprint on them and I was today years old that I learned how that trigger interface worked. I remember seeing the walkman-looking part and the power strip with all the lights and stuff plugged in but never knew how the touch trigger worked. Thanks!
Okay that was legitimately really neat, and once you mentioned "Museums" it totally made a lot more sense! When it comes to cars, most of the windows you could stick it on, would be part of a door that you'd likely want to open, and get into the car through. So while maybe it did work for Car dealerships, it seems to me the Museums likely benefited the most from it. Furthermore, I suspect the audio projects better with single-pane glass, than double-pane. Your second demonstration likely is single-pane, but I can't be sure. I suspect the double-paning dampens a good bit of that vibrational transfer that exhibits as audio. Anyways, really cool! I'm tempted to start thinking about how to do equivalent things with home hacking... NEAT!
Well that's something l've never seen or heard of, was a great idea to give information when needed, so thankyou for more interesting gadgets, nice job, PS you should have had the puppet knocking on the glass, there really good ciau
The visual aspect might come to life by using this device with, say, models of medieval towns at local history museums, where a turret, townhall or market would light up whilst being talked about on the audio. Or in technical displays, highlighting circuits whilst explaining them, etc.
U.S. Military recruiters used to put these in shop windows with recruitment posters for the Army, Navy, and AirForce. If you were a young man, you knew a military recruiter would follow you like a Scientologist looking for a new cult member. So we always joked they recruiters were capturing copies of your fingerprints when you played the audio (So they could find you later at home for an enlistment pitch).
I was a US Army Recruiter back in 1993-96 and we had one of these issued to us to use. We installed ours against a front window to our office but it was a waste of time since nobody used it.
I believe I saw something similar to this as a small child, but with a button. It was at a museum. You’d tap a button, and a taped message would repeat. Sometimes a display light would switch on as well. I never considered what the machine playing the message must have looked like.
This seems tailor-made for 80s-era museum displays. I can practically smell the spotlights switching on pointed at some hapless stuffed animal in a nature diorama.
The "plug-in relay module that lights up lights" thing just makes me think it's a really limited, poor-man's copy of the system that's in (or used to be in) most museums aimed at children, where there's a pre-recorded spiel that plays and the various things discussed get spot-lit and/or have their section back-lit on the plaque. Now that I'm dredging up those memories, I think SeaWorld had that at some of their exhibits too...
This reminds me. I have a locker mate kicking around here somewhere. Go up to it and blow a special whistle (you got 3) and it would record a message for you, like an answer machine. The recorder was kept in a locker and the Mic sat on the inside of the door. Similar in ways.
