Bet you’ve never heard Beethoven on a Tefifon

Unless you are German or collect vintage audio equipment, chances are you have never even heard of the Tefifon. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, since virtually everything has a Wikipedia page.

The Tefifon was a German-developed and manufactured audio playback format that utilized cartridges loaded with an endlessly looped reel of plastic tape (much like the later 4-track and 8-track magnetic audio tape cartridges) with grooves embossed on it, similar to the ones on a phonograph record.

Born in the 1950s, it never really caught on, but it’s a fascinating contraption. For a better sense of the Tefifon and how it works, I recommend this 11-minute video from a blog called Techmoan.

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