Snape's iPod - Gramophone's for the Young.

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 142517

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zgirnius" <zgirnius at y...> wrote:
>
> "Caius Marcius" <coriolan at w...> wrote:
>  
> > It may be a just a Flint, but, surely, so skilled a wizard as
> > Slughorn  could figure out some way to play a phonograph sans 
> > electricity?
> > 
> >   - CMC

> zgirnius:
> It is described as old-fashioned. Perhaps JKR does not mean
> 'compared to a CD player', but *really* old-fashioned. They 
> did not run off electricity back in 1901...
>

bboyminn:

Who's buttons have been punched again. 

" ...the quickly stifled sounds of an old gramophone...."

Do any of you young whipper-snappers (he said with a friendly grin)
even understand what a gramophone is? The first record players had no
electric motors or electric amplifiers, as Zginrius points out
above(thank you). They had a mechanical system that you wound up with
a crank to spin the record which was about a quarter of an inch thick
(the record), and a needle attached to a diaphram which in turn was
attached to a horn-shaped megaphone, and that's all it took to play a
record. 

"August 12, 1877, is the date popularly given for Edison's completion
of the model for the first phonograph."

As a side note: Edison's first phonographs used foil cylinders instead
of the more traditional disk shaped records that ancient dinosaurs
like myself are more familiar with.

As to my previous post to Nora about Collin's camera. I hope everyone
understands that I wasn't really criticizing Nora. Just commenting on
the commonly, and very mistakenly, held belief that a camera couldn't
possibly work without electricity. 

Yes... yes... I admitted to a snarky attitude then and I admit to it
now, but really people, despite living in the jaded digital age, is it
really that much to expect the world at large to understand the basics
of the gramophone and box camera? 

My truest apologies to Nora with my assurance that I wasn't attacking
her personally, and that I realize her reference to the camera was an
incidental and insignificantly tangental point that had nothing really
to do with her central point. If any offense was taken, then I humble
bow and apologies profusely.

Despite knowing about gramophones and box cameras, I'm not really that
old.

Steve/bboyminn