4-inch

Durium Junior (1932 – 1933)

Durium Junior was a flexible single-sided 4-inch phonograph disc made from Durium (a synthetic brown resin invented in the US in 1929) with a cardboard backing. These were introduced in 1931 by the Durium Products Corp. who also made the 10-inch Hit Of The Week phonograph records in the US.

The Durium Junior mostly offered advertising and music combined though some were just music, and they played for around one and a half minutes. The format was also used for some childrens records.

The last Hit Of The Week release was in June 1932 and Durium Records in the UK ended production in January 1933. It’s unclear when Durium Junior ended, but it was likely around the same time.

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Garrard Magazine tape (1959 – early 1960s)

Garrard Magazine tape was an early attempt to make handling open reel tape easier. It was introduced in 1959 along with a new ‘Magazine’ tape deck which was produced by Garrard in the UK, but could be found in systems sold by other manufacturers (such as Simon, who produced the Minstrelle and Cymbal models, and Murphy with their TR1 tape recorder).

The Magazine tape required no threading, and the tape was attached to the reels so there was no need to anchor the tape onto the take-up spool. The magazine contained a brake system to prevent spillage. The deck was also simple to use, with a single speed of 3¾ inches per second, and no rewind facility (to rewind, the tape needed to be turned over). A lock prevented the magazine being removed whilst in operation. Like other open reel tape recorders of the day, it could record and playback, but no pre-recorded content was available on the Magazine tape format.

The magazine contained two 4-inch reels of ¼-inch tape on cine spindle hubs, giving a playing time of 35 minutes per side. The Magazine deck could also take standard open reels of tape, provided they were no more than 4-inches in diameter. The reels inside the magazine could also be removed and played on a standard open reel tape recorder (much like the Philips EL 3581 dictation tape cartridge introduced the previous year).

The Garrard Magazine deck wasn’t used by many manufacturers nor was it popular with the public and it doesn’t appear to have lasted long.

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Hip-Pocket Record (1967 – 1969)

Hip-Pocket Records were 4-inch, 45-rpm, flexible phonograph records manufactured by Philco. Philco also produced portable players for the discs, but they could also be played on manual phonographs.

Philco teamed with three major record companies, Atlantic, Mercury and Roulette, to produce music for them, and around 50 titles were released. They were sold for 69 cents at Woolworth, and also at local Ford Dealers and came in colourful packaging that was significantly larger than the disc itself.

Hip-Pocket Records contained a song on each side, but could only be played about a dozen times before they were worn out by the stylus.

Americom produced a very similar format under the name PocketDisc.

Both Hip-Pocket Records and PocketDiscs were marketed for their portability, and the ability to send them through the post or keep in a pocket without damage.

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