I got this beautiful machine when it came out in 1962.  It is a desktop tape recorder for dictation and musical recording, essentially a miniature reel-to-reel.  These are the machines that replaced wire recorders (devices that used wires as their recording medium!) Tape has much higher audio fidelity than wire, although wire has higher heat tolerance and playtime.

This particular machine records up to two hours a spool at normal speed, four hours at low fidelity.  It has a wall plug, of course, and it also takes 4 "D" Batteries, which will power it for 15 hours.  There's a convenient resettable counter on the front that helps you find specific spots on the tape.

In addition, the Concertone has a built-in AM receiver so it's easy to record music off the air. 

This raises the question: if one tapes a song off of Radio Caroline, does that make the recorder a double-pirate?