From humble earpiece to the world of bluetooth

It was a blast from the past from the Police that brought memories flooding back of a time when the height of sophistication was to surreptitiously tune into Radio Luxembourg by means of a white earpiece that looked like a hearing aid from the Jurassic era.

Roxanne may not have had the benefit of stereo surround sound on her way up the charts back in the late seventies but this bulky little plastic earpiece was still cutting edge in acoustic advancement.

And this little miracle wasn’t just for music either.

You saw them in sports grounds all the time – the guy with the tinny pocket radio attached to his ear by a level of technology that in hindsight was only a small step from the two tins cans attached together with a length of string.

It may not have been pretty but at least it finally meant not having to acquire the indent of a radio grill on your ear as you tried to hear Micheal O’Hehir or Philip Greene by attaching the thing to the of your head.

The earpiece did away with all of that, allowing you to instead put a little transistor into your top pocket, with the lead to your ear the only discernible sign that you were tuned into something from a long way away.

But still you were stuck with the DJ’s choice because the world of taping – or recording – was a distance away.

Then came the front-loading tape recorder, a wonder of modern science that allowed you to pirate the charts from 2FM ‘cominacha’ provided Larry Gogan didn’t keep crashing the opening line.

The problem was that this also involved everyone in the room staying silent as statues for the duration of the Top 30, because there was rarely more than one radio in the house.

Whatever chance you had of that, if you wanted to make an audio tape off the telly – of, say, the All-Ireland or FA Cup Final – you were deluded if you think that a goal wouldn’t trigger a collective roar.

The solution was two-fold – the radio/tape recorder and the VCR.

Suddenly you could tape songs straight from the same machine in one case – and wonder of wonders, you could record your favourite shows from the telly.

Now no home was complete without a shelf of cassettes where surreptitiously recorded songs were stored by their hundreds to be replayed whenever you wanted to.

Who can forget those BASF blank cassettes in a choice of duration from one to two hours, opening up a new world to teenage music fans in a time when tablets were something you took when you were sick?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.