The main page of this site is currently displaying a small sliver of the image reproduced below. It’s a page from a SONY consumer electronics catalog (Japanese) from the early 70s.
I pulled this page from a website that i sometimes refer to as The Greatest Website In The World: the “product design database” of the Quatre Design Corporation. I have no idea what the Quatre Corp is or what they do, and i have no idea how i stumbled upon this page… feel like it was in the pre boing-boing era… anyway, check it out. Basically, these Quatre folks (likely industrial designers) have hi-res scanned and archived hundreds of Japanese-language consumer electronics and automotive catalogs from the past 50 years.
http://my.reset.jp/~inu/ProductsDataBase/index2.htm
This is a veritable goldmine of 70s audio hardware, as well as some of the wackiest audio marketing concepts that I Have Ever Seen. Check out the SONY catalogs especially. There is something so great about this style of photography. the soft light, the ever-present gradient background… it’s so dreamlike and futuristic all at once. Get ready to waste some time…
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