I still have the old Dual turntable I bought in 1977, with a Shure V15. It's a belt-drive semi-auto table (meaning manual cueing to start play, but an automatic lift-off and power-off at the end. This came in handy in case of falling asleep while listening to that last record - no wearing out the inner groove! The tone arm is actually pretty nice, in my opinion.
One somewhat unusual characteristic of the Dual tonearm from back then is that tracking force is applied by a little coil spring, rather than by unbalancing the mass of the arm/cartridge. Basically, the arm is balanced in all planes, then the tracking and anti-skating forces are applied via springs. As a result, the tracking force is always perpendicular to the plane of the record, regardless of whether the turntable is level, or tilted. With a record clamp to hold the record in place, you can play a record with the turntable on its side, or even upside down, for that matter. The cueing still works, too. Not that there is any practical value to this - it's just an amusing thing to try out.
Going a bit further back (mid 1910's, I think) we also have a working Victrola in our family room, with a 25 or so old 78's. It is wind-up, of course, and instead of having an external horn, it uses a folded horn arrangement built into the cabinetry below the turntable. Volume is controlled by how open you leave the little doors in front of the folded horn baffle/"port". The "stylus" is literally a carbon or graphite needle, meant to be replaced pretty often as they wear down. I have a bag of about 30 of them. Speed control of the turntable is actually not too bad, as there is a built in speed gauge. But, you have to keep it "cranked", so to speak. Fidelity is low, but appropriate to the software being played. Most of the 78's came with the Victrola when I bought it, and reflect an eclectic mix of old musicals (think Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald), 20's era jazz and pop standards, and marches. Not my usual musical tastes!
