The gramophone became very popular in the 1920s. It was a box turntable that often resembled a neat piece of living-room furniture. The tube was replaced by a resonance chamber hidden in the casing. Such a turntable played music from shellac discs of 10 inches (popular music) and 12 inches (classical music) at 78 rpm. Up to 5 minutes could be recorded on one side of the larger disc so longer pieces were recorded on a few discs and sold together as albums. In this room, we can see turntable models from more- and less-well known producers of phonographic equipment from the 1930s:

The ODEONETTE box turntable: this phonograph comes from the Berlin ODEON established in 1903 by Max Strauss and Heinrich Zuntz.

The KLINGSOR box turntable: the company called ‘Klingsor’ was established around 1905 on the initiative of Heinrich Klenk, a producer of musical instruments. It was known for its beautiful, large and exclusive equipment that combined a string instrument with a turntable. The name of the company refers to Parsifal, an opera by Wagner.

PARLOPHONE box turntable: this phonograph is one of the products manufactured by the PRAROPHON gramophone producer established in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company. The label's trademark is the letter ₤ - a German L, derived from the surname Lindström. The name refers to the idea of recording sound on discs reproduced from a model, whose originator was the French poet and inventor Charles Cros. In the 1920s, Parlophone was known as a record company recognised for the jazz music it published. It became a part of the famous company EMI in 1931.

The inter-war period was a time of radio broadcasting development. Towards the end of the 19th century, which were the early days of the radio (G. Marconi received a patent in 1896), it was similar to the telegraph but without the cable network, because radio waves carried the sound information. After an experimental period, the first permanent public radio station went  on the air in Pittsburgh (USA) in 1920.

Note the examples of radio models standing close to one another:

– a crystal radio receiver from the mid-1920s. Crystal receivers are one of the earliest and simplest of receivers. Their great advantage was that they needed no power source; the disadvantage was that the reception was good only if the radio was close by, and they had no amplification, so they required the use of headphones. The name comes from the main element of the receiver, i.e., a crystal detector or an early variant of a diode.

– the vacuum tube model AEG Super 58 GW, a German radio receiver from the late 1930s. In response to the growing demands related to sound quality, the 1920s and 1930s brought a range of solutions improving the quality of recordings. Changes included the shape of the casing, the shape of the arm and the material from which a needle was made. An electric method of recording began to be used in 1925, which extended the frequency response to 5000Hz and increased the volume. Electric turntables quickly began to displace acoustic ones. Examples of early electric turntables can also be seen in this room.