Minifon P55 Spy Recorder 1960 unboxing! - tape recorder? No!

You'd THINK a small, spy recorder made in 1960 would have transistors in it and use tiny tapes. But noooo, a disinformation campaign has given you flawed information. This little recorder uses neither transistors nor tapes.

This impressive little Minifon p55 was made in Germany, Germany, between 1955 and 1960. I was lucky enough to find this example still in its original box. This would be what I'd call an export box, a box printed for distribution in another country. This one says "Geiss-America, Chicago, Illinois, Exclusive Importers and Distributors in the U.S.A." The box may have been printed in Germany or perhaps by Geiss-America in the US. The papers... are in English.

This first one looks like a sales brochure and it has a price list paper-clipped to it. Prices would fluctuate often enough to make it impractical to print the prices right on the color brochure. Inflation? Probably not in this case. It would be the exchange rate between Germany's deutsche mark and the US dollar that caused the changing prices. "Take a look at the Minifon," it says. Ooo, lot's of stuff there.

And this looks like another brochure, and more accessories. An attache case. People today would never believe how popular those were back in the '60s. Today there are backpacks of course and people don't even remember that back then NOBODY at all, except maybe a boy scout on a hike, had a backpack. This brochure is the rational one, the one that persuades you with all the practical reasons you should buy this thing.

What's the thing in the yellowed envelope? It's a piece of gold foil for personalizing your Minifon. You use it like carbon paper to apply gold lettering--your initials, typically. What's that you say? What's carbon paper? Ask your grandfather. How to Get Perfect Recordings. Some tips on getting good sound and on how to actually use the various accessories. This is basically the owner's manual I think.

And now we have wires--a lot of wires. The microphone. And a power adaptor. You'd be using this power adaptor too, whenever you could, since this thing would burn through batteries fairly quickly and it uses three different kinds of batteries, the kind that weren't cheap. You'd save your batteries for undercover work.

And here's a tape. Or is it? It IS a tape recorder, right? Sorry, your sources are unreliable and you've been duped again. Further investigation confirms that the recording medium is not tape, but wire.

What?, you say. Yes, it's true. One of the forgotten sound recording mediums of the 20th century was wire. These recorders work basically like a tape recorder. Or rather I should say that tape recorders work like wire recorders because wire was first. When recording, magnetic impulses in the recorder's head are stored as magnetic patterns on the wire as it moves past the head. When you play it back, that same head, now in "play" mode, senses those impulses and sends them to be amplified for playback. Tape works the same way. Tape is a lot harder to make than wire. So if they already had wire, why tape? Well, for one thing, you can only get one track on a wire. Tape gives you multiple tracks. Stereo. And more.

The Minifon's cabinet is metal, finished in a dappled sort of paint that makes it look like industrial equipment.

There are no transistors in the Minifon. Like this Belmont Boulevard radio from 1947, the Minifon uses subminiature tubes. Here they are inside the Belmont... and by themselves.

As collectors, we think of these as spy recorders. And indeed you could even get tiny hidden mikes for use with them--even a wristwatch that was really a secret microphone. But in reality, most of these were used as office equipment, for dictation and note-taking. As for music, they wouldn't be used much at all for that.

This model P55 came in a version Model L and also a Model S. This one has an "S" on the serial number and says on the box that it's a model #5600, Model "S" 2 hour recorder. That's a lot of wire.

I mentioned this gizmo uses three different batteries, and each one was a different voltage: One for the motor, and two for the electronics, one of which was just to light the tube filaments.

Back to the paperwork once more--for a closer look at this interesting brochure...

...and at the introduction page that spells out what all the features are and where you'll find them.

The Minion P55.

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