{"id":246,"date":"2006-12-08T17:10:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-08T17:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/?p=246"},"modified":"2006-12-08T17:10:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-08T17:10:00","slug":"my-dad-the-teacher-toy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/?p=246","title":{"rendered":"My Dad &#8212; The Teacher Toy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"My%20Dad%20--%20The%20Teacher%20Toy\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>Read the post titled &#8220;In Memeory Of&#8230;&#8221; before reading this.<\/p>\n<p>OK. Proceed!<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t recall the exact year, but in the early 70&#8217;s dad built a device that could have replaced the &#8220;Speak and Spell&#8221;. About the size of a bread box, the &#8220;Teacher Toy&#8221; was made from a gutted reel-to-reel tape recorder. You would put a flash card in the slot on top of the box, push a button, and the card would move from left to right. The flash card was a standard index card that had a drawing of an object on one side and a strip of magnetic tape on the bottom of the other. As the card moved across the slot via a set of pulleys, the name and spelling of the pictured object would be read aloud from the speaker within the box. The one card I remember was a drawing of a trout. Because the &#8220;Teacher Toy&#8221; used flash cards, you could have an infinite number of objects to display and spell, unlike the &#8220;Speak and Spell&#8221;, which is limited to the 12 items pre-programmed in the box. It may sound antiquated by today&#8217;s technological standards, but for us the &#8220;Teacher Toy&#8221; was just short of magic.<\/p>\n<p>My dad was Mr. Fix-It, and tinkered with all manner of devices, from radios and TV&#8217;s, to just about every single car we ever owned. I&#8217;m not sure if I can call my dad an inventor, since the &#8220;Teacher Toy&#8221; is the only thing I can recall that he built from scratch, but since I am the 5th child of six, he may have built other things I&#8217;m not aware of. What I am sure of is that I inherited his talent for fixing stuff. That will be the topic of the next &#8220;My Dad&#8221; post.<\/p>\n<p>PS. The picture of the trout was drawn by Dad. Did I forget to mention Dad was pretty talented with a pencil and drawing pad, a talent I definitely DID NOT inherit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"My%20Dad%20--%20The%20Teacher%20Toy\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>Read the post titled &#8220;In Memeory Of&#8230;&#8221; before reading this. OK. Proceed! I don&#8217;t recall the exact year, but in the early 70&#8217;s dad built a device that could have replaced the &#8220;Speak and Spell&#8221;. About the size of a bread box, the &#8220;Teacher Toy&#8221; was made from a gutted reel-to-reel tape recorder. You would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}