Panasonic talking radio

[Dave A]

Only 1971 but 52 years old.

My local radio club (DVHRC) is doing a show-and-tell on clock radios this month. So I dusted of my Panasonic RC-6900 "talking clock" radio for the night. It is a purchase from early ebay that has been sitting for years. Maybe 10 years since power. It powered fine and is great tonight. FM good. AM fair. When you press the top button, it "talks" to you in a female voice that mutes the radio with the current time. "3:45" and then the radio comes back. It will voice the time with the radio on or off.

It is a sandwich construction with the AM/FM radio on the bottom. A very ordinary radio for 1971. Above it is an amazing clock for both the front face clock and above that for the voice clock taking up most of the upper half. Ordinary controls for vol/tone/AMFM/tuning are below on the front. A dial string tuner is underneath and moving above to the dial. Above that is the clock assembly, I have not opened it as I will never get it back together again properly. Engineering guesses from here with help from a Brit on youtube that took one apart. Thanks for the insight.

The single rear adjustment for the clock set is the clue. It has to move both the front clock and voice clock movements in coordination and it does. The voice portion on top is amazing. It is a dual magnetic disc platter the has an inner "hours" voice track and an outer "minutes" voice track pre-recorded and maybe only four inches across. It is read by the clock/edge geared sweep assembly that has an ordinary tape audio head with a small addition...a tiny roller to ride over the voice tracks that probably reads to the head poles. As the piviot is on the side of the two round platters, it moves in a short crescent sweep...not a spiral...and then returns home. It mutes at the start and takes a bit to unmute as the carriage returns home.

The head first plays the "hours" inner voice track. The it glides to the outer "minutes" voice track. Both of these move along mechanically with the clock mechanism to keep the current time for the current voice track reads. The inner hours platter is slightly above the outer track so the head can glide down for a clean read.

This thing was long before ADA considerations for the hearing impaired. It was just a miracle radio innovation much like the Panasonic 1.5" BW tv of the same year.

[WISCOJIM]

Originally Posted by Dave A

This thing was long before ADA considerations for the hearing impaired.

Visually impaired?

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[dishdude]

Please post some pictures!

[WISCOJIM]

Originally Posted by dishdude

Please post some pictures!

I've had a couple of these I flipped years ago, and still see them for $25-40 at regional radio swap meets. Here's some more info on these: https://dustyoldthing.com/worlds-fir...m-clock-radio/

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[Dave A]

WISCOJIM, thanks, I was going to use grabs from his Youtube. Matt does it better than I can.