National Panasonic

This unit is somewhat interesting in a number of ways. 

This was National Panasonics first radio cassette unit. Their first cassette was a Philips cassette mechanism (Typ EL 3300) in a National case. This was in 1967.

Philips had released both the tape and a recorder-player following the Berlin Radio Show in August 1963. It was released as an updated model (Typ EL 3301) in the U.S. as the Norleco CarryCorder 150 in November 1964. By 1965 Sony was pressuring Philips, under pressure from Grundig and Telefunken with their DC International,  to licence the technology for free. Philips eventually relented and Sony produced blank Compact Cassettes and their own recorder/players from 1966 - the TC 100. 

The unit is also interesting because the unit had 3 way power, D Cell batteries for 7.5 volts, 6 or 12 volt car power, and a/c mains.

You could buy a basic unit, add a microphone pack, add the a/c adapter, and add a car cradle. The unit I have has the microphone and the very heavy car cradle. With the ability to record notes and dictate letters in the car, advertisments were often directed at managers and other busness people.   However, the cost was high at $100 for the recorder, and $125 for the complete kit. 

By the 1970s the Compact Cassette was the world standard, with other similar 1/8 inch tape formats disapearing. The format improved dramatically from it's dictation machine roots, stereo was introduced, and the ubiquitous MisiCassette was introduced.

This particular unit was owned by a business man in the late 1960s who used it to dictate letters in his car for his secretary to type up. He stoped using it when he bought a new car, and the erase system started to fail - a common problen with the Philips transports.