Action Bastard

The Normandy Landings (codenamed Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front.

The amphibious landings were preceded by extensive aerial and naval bombardment and an airborne assault—the landing of 24,000 American, British, and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight. Allied infantry and armoured divisions began landing on the coast of France at 06:30.

The 1924 Mikiphone Was The World’s First Pocket Record Player. The pocket size phonograph sponsored by the Moulin Rouge.

The Mikiphone pocket phonograph was designed by Hungarian brothers Miklós and Étienne Vadász, and mass produced under licence by Masison Paillard of Saint Croix, Switzerland.

Formed by a consortium of local watch makers in 1814, Paillard began making music boxes from about 1860. Just before the turn of the century, the company added cylinder phonographs to its catalogue, switching to disc gramophones in 1905. In 1913, Paillard developed an electric AC gramophone motor, and from 1927 the company built electric amplifiers for gramophones, and later radio equipment. Somewhere between those two developments, Paillard made around 180,000 of the Vadász brothers’ Mikiphones.

The Science Museum in London says the first machine was made in 1923, and in November 1924 patented and licensed by Paillard, which, as Earthly Mission notes, churned the thing out between 1925 and 1927.