Many years ago, in 1982, I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, for about 8 months. I took on a job at the museum where I had a desk in the entrance and encouraged people to hire an audio “tour”. This was a tape recorder with headphones and people could listen to information about the exhibition in a variety of languages.
As I recall the service wasn’t very popular, and the fellow who hired me tried to avoid paying me my earnings. I’m sure though that if I’d been offering a sleek and shiny iPod the uptake would have been quite different. The concept after all was good. Today I read this:
Tokyo museum begins iPod audio guide service
Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum has begun an audio guide service using Apple Inc.’s iPod digital audio players.
Visitors to the museum can borrow for no charge one of 20 iPods and listen to an audio guide of a current exhibition, which includes interviews with the creators and artists behind some of the pieces of art on display.
By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service, February 23, 2004 8:00 am ET [From: MacCentral.