Gramophone record
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A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record (in American English), vinyl record (in reference to vinyl, the material most commonly used after about 1950), or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc — the opposite of the spiral of pits in the Compact Disc (CD) medium, which starts near the centre and works outwards. Phonograph records are generally described by their diameter in inches (12-inch, 10-inch, 7-inch, etc.), the rotational speed at which they are played (33⅓ r.p.m., 78, 45, etc.), their time capacity (Long Playing), their reproductive accuracy, or fidelity, or the number of channels of audio provided (Mono, Stereo, Quadraphonic, etc.).
Gramophone records were the primary medium used for music reproduction for most of the 20th century, replacing the phonograph cylinder, with which it had co-existed, by the 1920s. By the late 1980s, digital media had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991.[1][2] However, they continue to be manufactured and sold in the 21st century. The vinyl record regained popularity by 2008, with nearly 2.9 million units shipped that year, the most in any year since 1998[3] and the format has continued to slowly regain popularity. They are especially used by DJs and audiophiles for many types of music. As of 2012, vinyl records continue to be used for distribution of independent and alternative music artists. More mainstream pop music releases tend to be mostly sold in compact disc or other digital formats, but have still been released in vinyl in certain instances.
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[edit] Early history
The phonautograph, patented by Léon Scott in 1857, used a vibrating diaphragm and stylus to graphically record sound waves as tracings on sheets of paper, purely for visual analysis and without any idea of playing them back. These tracings can now be scanned and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008. Along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound.
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no documentary evidence that Edison's phonograph was based on Scott's phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a wax-impregnated paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. Although the visible results made him confident that sound could be physically recorded and reproduced, his notes do not indicate that he actually reproduced sound before his first experiment using tinfoil as a recording medium several months later. The tinfoil was wrapped around a grooved metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately. The Scientific American article that introduced the tinfoil phonograph to the public mentioned Marey, Rosapelly and Barlow as well as Scott as creators of devices for recording but, importantly, not reproducing sound.[4] Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats.[5] Numerous applications for the phonograph were envisioned, but although it enjoyed a brief vogue as a startling novelty at public demonstrations, the tinfoil phonograph proved too crude to be put to any practical use. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that employed a hollow wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful device. The wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century.
Lateral-cut disc records were developed in the United States by Emile Berliner, who named his system the gramophone, distinguishing it from Edison's wax cylinder phonograph and Columbia's wax cylinder graphophone. Berliner's earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 5 inches in diameter, and were played with a small hand-propelled machine. Both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity. In the United States in 1894, under the Berliner Gramophone trademark, Berliner started marketing 7-inch gramophone records with somewhat more substantial entertainment value, along with somewhat more substantial gramophones to play them. Berliner's records had poor sound quality compared to wax cylinders, but his manufacturing associate Eldridge R. Johnson eventually improved them. Abandoning Berliner's Gramophone trademark for legal reasons, in 1901 Johnson's and Berliner's separate companies reorganized to form the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose products would come to dominate the market for many years.[6]
In 1901, 10-inch disc records were introduced, followed in 1903 by 12-inch records. These could play for more than three and four minutes respectively, while contemporary cylinders could only play for about two minutes. In an attempt to head off the disc advantage, Edison introduced the Amberol cylinder in 1909, with a maximum playing time of 4½ minutes (at 160 rpm), to be in turn superseded by the Blue Amberol Record with a playing surface made of celluloid, an early plastic which was far less fragile. Despite these improvements, during the 1910s discs decisively won this early format war, although Edison continued to produce new Blue Amberol cylinders for an ever-dwindling customer base until late in 1929. By 1919 the basic patents for the manufacture of lateral-cut disc records had expired, opening the field for countless companies to produce them. Analog disc records would dominate the home entertainment market until they were gradually supplanted by the digital compact disc, introduced in 1983.
[edit] 78 rpm disc developments
[edit] Early speeds
Early disc recordings were produced in a variety of speeds ranging from 60 to 130 rpm, and a variety of sizes. As early as 1894, Emile Berliner's United States Gramophone Company was selling single-sided 7-inch discs with an advertised standard speed of about 70 rpm.[7]
One standard audio recording handbook describes speed regulators or governors as being part of a wave of improvement introduced rapidly after 1897. A picture of a hand-cranked 1898 Berliner Gramophone shows a governor. It says that spring drives replaced hand drives. It notes that:
The speed regulator was furnished with an indicator that showed the speed when the machine was running so that the records, on reproduction, could be revolved at exactly the same speed...The literature does not disclose why 78 rpm was chosen for the phonograph industry, apparently this just happened to be the speed created by one of the early machines and, for no other reason continued to be used.[8]
By 1925, the speed of the record was becoming standardized at a nominal value of 78 revolutions per minute (rpm). However, the standard was to differ between countries with their alternating current electricity supply running at 60 cycles per second (now Hertz) and the rest of the world. The actual 78 speed within 60-cycle countries was 78.26 rpm, being the speed of a 3600 rpm synchronous motor reduced by 46:1 gearing. Throughout other countries, 77.92 rpm was adopted being the speed of a 3000 rpm synchronous motor powered by a 50 Hz supply and reduced by 77:2 gearing.
[edit] Acoustic recording
Early recordings were made entirely acoustically, the sound being collected by a horn and piped to a diaphragm which vibrated the cutting stylus. Sensitivity and frequency range were poor, and frequency response was very irregular, giving acoustic recordings an instantly recognizable tonal quality. A singer practically had to put his face in the recording horn. Lower orchestral instruments such as cellos and double basses were often doubled (or replaced) by louder wind instruments, such as tubas. Standard violins in orchestral ensembles were commonly replaced by Stroh violins which became popular with recording studios.
Contrary to popular belief, if placed properly and prepared-for, drums could be effectively used and heard on even the earliest jazz and military band recordings. The loudest instruments stood the farthest away from the collecting horn. Lillian Hardin Armstrong, a member of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band that recorded at Gennett Records in 1923, remembered that at first Oliver and his young second trumpet, Louis Armstrong, stood next to each other and Oliver's horn couldn't be heard. They put Louis about fifteen feet over in the corner, looking all sad.[9][10]
[edit] Electrical recording
During the first half of the 1920s, engineers at Western Electric, as well as independent inventors such as Orlando Marsh, developed technology for capturing sound with a microphone, amplifying it with vacuum tubes, then using the amplified signal to drive an electromagnetic recording head. Western Electric's innovations resulted in a greatly expanded and more even frequency response, creating a dramatically fuller, clearer and more natural-sounding recording. Distant or feeble sounds that were impossible to record by the old method could now be captured. Volume was limited only by the groove spacing on the record and the limitations of the intended playback device. Victor and Columbia licensed the new system from Western Electric and began issuing electrically recorded discs in 1925.
Although the technology used vacuum tubes and today would be described as electronic, at the time it was referred to as electrical. A 1926 Wanamaker's ad in The New York Times offers records by the latest Victor process of electrical recording.[11] It was recognized as a breakthrough; in 1930, a Times music critic stated:
... the time has come for serious musical criticism to take account of performances of great music reproduced by means of the records. To claim that the records have succeeded in exact and complete reproduction of all details of symphonic or operatic performances ... would be extravagant ... [but] the article of today is so far in advance of the old machines as hardly to admit classification under the same name. Electrical recording and reproduction have combined to retain vitality and color in recitals by proxy.[12]
Electrical recording preceded electrical home reproduction because of the initial high cost of the electronics. In 1925, the Victor company introduced the groundbreaking Victor Orthophonic Victrola, an acoustical record player that was specifically designed to play electrically recorded discs, as part of a line that also included electrically reproducing Electrolas. The acoustical Orthophonics ranged in price from US$95 to US$300, depending on cabinetry; by comparison, the cheapest Electrola cost US$650, the price of a new Ford automobile in an era when clerical jobs paid about $20 a week.
The Orthophonic had an interior folded exponential horn, a sophisticated design informed by impedance-matching and transmission-line theory, and designed to provide a relatively flat frequency response. Its first public demonstration was front-page news in the New York Times, which reported that:
The audience broke into applause ... John Philip Sousa [said]: '[Gentlemen], that is a band. This is the first time I have ever heard music with any soul to it produced by a mechanical talking machine' ... The new instrument is a feat of mathematics and physics. It is not the result of innumerable experiments, but was worked out on paper in advance of being built in the laboratory ... The new machine has a range of from 100 to 5,000 [cycles], or five and a half octaves ... The 'phonograph tone' is eliminated by the new recording and reproducing process.[13]
Gradually, electrical reproduction entered the home. The spring motor was replaced by an electric motor. The old sound box with its needle-linked diaphragm was replaced by an electromagnetic pickup that converted the needle vibrations into an electrical signal. The tone arm now served to conduct a pair of wires, not sound waves, into the cabinet. The exponential horn was replaced by an amplifier and a loudspeaker.
[edit] 78 rpm materials
The earliest disc records (1889–1894) were made of various materials including hard rubber. Around 1895, a shellac-based compound was introduced and became standard. Exact formulas for this compound varied by manufacturer and over the course of time, but it was typically composed of about one-third shellac and about two-thirds mineral filler, which meant finely pulverized rock, usually slate and limestone, with an admixture of cotton fibers to add tensile strength, carbon black for color (without this, it tended to be a dirty gray or brown color that most record companies considered unattractive), and a very small amount of a lubricant to facilitate mold release during manufacture. Some makers, notably Columbia Records, used a laminated construction with a core disc of coarser material or fiber. The production of shellac records continued until the end of the 78 rpm format (i.e., the late 1950s in most developed countries, but well into the 1960s in some other places), but increasingly less abrasive formulations were used during its declining years and very late examples in truly like-new condition can be nearly as noiseless as vinyl.
Flexible or so-called unbreakable records made of unusual materials were introduced by a number of manufacturers at various times during the 78 rpm era. In the UK, Nicole records, made of celluloid or a similar substance coated onto a cardboard core disc, were produced for a few years beginning in 1904, but they suffered from an exceptionally high level of surface noise. In the United States, Columbia Records introduced flexible, fiber-cored Marconi Velvet Tone Record pressings in 1907, but the advantages and longevity of their relatively noiseless surfaces depended on the scrupulous use of special gold-plated Marconi Needles and the product was not a success. Thin, flexible plastic records such as the German Phonycord and the British Filmophone and Goodson records appeared around 1930 but also did not last long. The contemporary French Pathé Cellodiscs, made of a very thin black plastic which uncannily resembles the vinyl sound sheet magazine inserts of the 1965-1985 era, were similarly short-lived. In the United States, Hit of the Week Records, made of a transparent plastic called Durium coated on a heavy brown paper base, were introduced in early 1930. A new issue came out every week and they were available at newsstands like a weekly magazine. Although inexpensive and moderately popular at first, they soon fell victim to the Great Depression and production ceased in the United States in 1932. Related Durium records continued to be made somewhat later in the UK and elsewhere, and as remarkably late as 1950 in Italy, where the name Durium survived far into the LP era as a trademark on ordinary vinyl records. Despite all these attempts at innovation, shellac compounds continued to be used for the overwhelming majority of commercial 78 rpm records during the life of the format.
In 1931, RCA Victor introduced their vinyl-based Victrolac compound as a material for some unusual-format and special-purpose records. By the end of the 1930s vinyl's advantages of light weight, relative unbreakability and low surface noise had made it the material of choice for prerecorded radio programming and a number of other uses. When it came to ordinary 78 rpm records, however, the much higher cost of the raw material, as well as its vulnerability to the heavy pickups and crudely mass-produced steel needles still commonly used in home record players, made its general substitution for shellac impractical at that time. During the Second World War, the United States Armed Forces produced thousands of 12-inch 78 rpm V-Discs for use by the troops overseas, as well as 16-inch 33 1/3 rpm War Department radio transcriptions, all of which were made of vinyl.[14] After the war, the wider use of vinyl became more practical as new record players with lightweight ceramic pickups and precision styli made of sapphire or a very hard and durable osmium alloy started to proliferate. Victor issued some classical music on transparent red vinyl De Luxe 78s at a de luxe price, and Decca introduced vinyl Deccalite 78s, but other labels confined their use of vinyl to the special thin vinyl DJ pressings of 78s commonly mailed to radio stations during the late 1940s and early 1950s.[15]
[edit] 78 rpm disc size
In the 1890s, the recording formats of the earliest (toy) discs were mainly 12.5 cm (nominally five inches) in diameter; by the mid-1890s, the discs were usually seven inches (nominally 17.5 cm) in diameter. By 1910 the 10-inch (25.4 cm) record was by far the most popular standard, holding about three minutes of music or entertainment on a side. From 1903 onwards, 12-inch records (30.5 cm) were also sold commercially, mostly of classical music or operatic selections, with four to five minutes of music per side. Victor, Brunswick and Columbia also issued 12-inch popular medleys, usually spotlighting a Broadway show score. However, other sizes did appear. Eight-inch discs with a 2-inch-diameter (51 mm) label became popular for about a decade in Britain, but they cannot be played in full on most modern record players because the tone arm cannot play far enough in toward the center without modification of the equipment.
[edit] 78 rpm recording time
The playing time of a phonograph record depended on the turntable speed and the groove spacing. At the beginning of the 20th century, the early discs played for two minutes, the same as early cylinder records.[16] The 12-inch disc, introduced by Victor in 1903, increased the playing time to three and a half minutes.[17] Because a 10-inch 78 rpm record could hold about three minutes of sound per side and the 10-inch size was the standard size for popular music, almost all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length.
For example, when King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, including Louis Armstrong on his first recordings, recorded 13 sides at Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, in 1923, one side was 2:09 and four sides were 2:52–2:59.[18]
By 1938, when Milt Gabler started recording on January 17 for his new label, Commodore Records, to allow longer continuous performances, he recorded some 12-inch records. Eddie Condon explained: Gabler realized that a jam session needs room for development. The first two 12-inch recordings did not take advantage of the extra length: Carnegie Drag was 3:15; Carnegie Jump, 2:41. But, at the second session, on April 30, the two 12-inch recordings were longer: Embraceable You was 4:05; Serenade to a Shylock, 4:32.[19][20]
Another way around the time limitation was to issue a selection on both sides of a single record. Vaudeville stars Gallagher and Shean, recorded Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean, written by Irving and Jack Kaufman, as two-sides of a 10-inch 78 in 1922 for Cameo.[21]
An obvious workaround for longer recordings was to release a set of records. An early multi-record release was in 1903, when HMV in England made the first complete recording of an opera, Verdi's Ernani, on 40 single-sided discs.[22] In 1940, Commodore released Eddie Condon and his Band's recording of A Good Man Is Hard to Find in four parts, issued on both sides of two 12-inch 78s.
This limitation on the duration of recordings persisted from 1910 until the invention of the LP record, in 1948.
In popular music, this time limitation of about 3:30 on a 10-inch 78 rpm record meant that singers usually did not release long pieces on record. One exception is Frank Sinatra's recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Soliloquy, from Carousel, made on May 28, 1946. Because it ran 7:57, longer than both sides of a standard 78 rpm 10-inch record, it was released on Columbia's Masterwork label (the classical division) as two sides of a 12-inch record.[23]
In the 78 era, classical-music and spoken-word items generally were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, about 4–5 minutes per side. For example, on June 10, 1924, four months after the February 12 premier of Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin recorded it with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. It was released on two sides of Victor 55225 and runs 8:59.[24]
[edit] Record albums
Such 78 rpm records were usually sold separately, in brown paper or cardboard sleeves that were sometimes plain and sometimes printed to show the producer or the retailer's name. Generally the sleeves had a circular cut-out allowing the record label to be seen. Records could be laid on a shelf horizontally or stood upright on an edge, but because of their fragility, many broke in storage.
German record company Odeon is often said to have pioneered the album in 1909 when it released the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky on 4 double-sided discs in a specially designed package. [1] (It is not indicated what size the records are.) However, Deutsche Grammophon had produced an album for its complete recording of the opera Carmen in the previous year. The practice of issuing albums does not seem to have been widely taken up by other record companies for many years; however, HMV provided an album, with a pictorial cover, for the 1917 recording of The Mikado (Gilbert & Sullivan).
By about 1910[note 1] bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records (the term record album was printed on some covers). These albums came in both 10-inch and 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them.
Starting in the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78 rpm records by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums, typically with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included 3 or 4 records, with 2 sides each, making 6 or 8 tunes per album. When the 12-inch vinyl LP era began in 1949, the single record often had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, and was still often referred to as an album.
A small number of 78 RPM records have been released after the major labels ceased production, for collectable or nostalgia purposes. Underground comic cartoonist and 78 RPM record collector Robert Crumb released three discs with his Cheap Suit Serenaders. More recently, The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band has released their tribute to blues guitarist Charley Patton Peyton on Patton on both 12-inch LP and 10-inch 78 RPM.[25] Both are accompanied with a link to a digital download of the music, acknowledging the probability that purchasers may be unable to play the vinyl recording.
[edit] New sizes and materials
Both the microgroove LP 33⅓ rpm record and the 45 rpm single records are made from vinyl plastic that is flexible and unbreakable in normal use. However, the vinyl records are easier to scratch or gouge, and much more prone to warping.
In 1931, RCA Victor (which evolved from the Johnson and Berliner's Victor Talking Machine Company) launched the first commercially available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as Program Transcription discs. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 33⅓ rpm and pressed on a 30 cm diameter flexible plastic disc, with a duration of about ten minutes playing time per side. In Roland Gelatt's book The Fabulous Phonograph, the author notes that RCA Victor's early introduction of a long-play disc was a commercial failure for several reasons including the lack of affordable, reliable consumer playback equipment and consumer wariness during the Great Depression.[26] Because of financial hardships that plagued the recording industry during that period (and RCA's own parched revenues), Victor's long playing records were quietly discontinued by early 1933.
There was also a small batch of longer playing records issued in the very early 1930s: Columbia introduced 10-inch longer playing records (18000-D series), as well as a series of double-grooved or longer playing 10-inch records on their Harmony, Clarion & Velvet Tone cheap labels. All of these were phased out in mid-1932.
However, vinyl's lower surface noise level than shellac was not forgotten, nor was its durability. In the late '30s, radio commercials and pre-recorded radio programs being sent to disc jockeys started being stamped in vinyl, so they would not break in the mail. In the mid-1940s, special DJ copies of records started being made of vinyl also, for the same reason. These were all 78 rpm. During and after World War II, when shellac supplies were extremely limited, some 78 rpm records were pressed in vinyl instead of shellac, particularly the six-minute 12-inch (30 cm) 78 rpm records produced by V-Disc for distribution to United States troops in World War II. In the '40s, radio transcriptions, which were usually on 16-inch records, but sometimes 12-inch, were always made of vinyl, but cut at 33⅓ rpm. Shorter transcriptions were often cut at 78 rpm.
Beginning in 1939, Dr. Peter Goldmark and his staff at Columbia Records undertook efforts to address problems of recording and playing back narrow grooves and developing an inexpensive, reliable consumer playback system. The 12-inch (30 cm) Long Play (LP) 33⅓ rpm microgroove record album was introduced by the Columbia Record Company at a New York press conference on June 21, 1948.
Unwilling to accept and license Columbia's system, in February 1949 RCA Victor released the first 45 rpm single, 7 inches in diameter with a large center hole. The 45 rpm player included a changing mechanism that allowed multiple disks to be stacked, much as a conventional changer handled 78s. The short playing time of a single 45 rpm side meant that long works, such as symphonies, had to be released on multiple 45s (rather than a single LP), but RCA claimed that the new high-speed changer rendered side breaks so brief as to be inaudible or inconsequential. Early 45 rpm records were made from either vinyl or polystyrene.[27] They had a playing time of eight minutes.[28]
Another size and format was that of radio transcription discs beginning in the 1940s. These records were usually vinyl, 33 RPM, and 16 inches in diameter. No home record player could accommodate such large records, and they were used mainly by radio stations. They were on average 15 minutes per side and contained several songs or radio program material. These records became less common when tape recorders began being used for radio transcriptions around 1949.
On a small number of early phonograph systems and radio transcription discs, as well as some entire albums, the direction of the groove is reversed, beginning near the center of the disc and leading to the outside. A small number of records (such as Jeff Mills' Apollo EP or the Hidden In Plainsight EP from Detroit's Underground Resistance) were manufactured with multiple separate grooves to differentiate the tracks (usually called 'NSC-X2').
[edit] Speeds
The earliest rotation speeds varied widely. Most records made in 1900–1925 were recorded at 74–82 revolutions per minute (rpm). Edison Disc Records consistently ran at 80 rpm.
One early attempt at lengthening the playing time should be mentioned. At least one manufacturer in the early 1920s, World Records, produced records that played at a constant linear velocity, controlled by Noel Pemberton Billing's patented add-on governor device.[29] As these were played from the outside to the inside, the rotational speed of the records increased as reproduction progressed. This action is similar (although in reverse) to that on the modern Compact Disc and the CLV version of its predecessor, the Philips Laser Disc.
In 1925, 78.26 rpm was chosen as the standard because of the introduction of the electrically powered synchronous turntable motor. This motor ran at 3600 rpm, such that a 46:1 gear ratio would produce 78.26 rpm. In parts of the world that used 50 Hz current, the standard was 77.92 rpm (3000 rpm with a 77:2 ratio), which was also the speed at which a strobe disc with 77 lines would stand still in 50 Hz light (92 lines for 60 Hz). After World War II these records were retroactively known as 78s, to distinguish them from other newer disc record formats. Earlier they were just called records, or when there was a need to distinguish them from cylinders, disc records.
After World War II, two new competing formats came on to the market and gradually replaced the standard 78: the 33⅓ rpm (often just referred to as the 33 rpm), and the 45 rpm (see above). The 33⅓ rpm LP (for long play) format was developed by Columbia Records and marketed in 1948. RCA Victor developed the 45 rpm format and marketed it in 1949, in response to Columbia.[31] Both types of new disc used narrower grooves, intended to be played with smaller stylus—typically 0.001 inches (25 µm) wide, compared to 0.003 inches (76 µm) for a 78—so the new records were sometimes called Microgroove. In the mid-1950s all record companies agreed to a common recording standard called RIAA equalization. Prior to the establishment of the standard each company used its own preferred standard, requiring discriminating listeners to use pre-amplifiers with multiple selectable equalization curves.
While stroboscopic speed checkers can be used to correctly adjust a turntable speed to 45 rpm in the U.S. where the stroboscope disc is illuminated by a lamp run from a 60 Hz supply, most strobes are slightly inaccurate where there is a 50 Hz supply. Using a conventional single segment per pulse, the nearest that can be achieved is 45.112+ rpm, which requires a disc with 133 segments. The difference amounts to the record sounding sharp by about a twenty-fifth of a semitone, i.e., practically unnoticeable. To construct a 50 Hz stroboscope disc that appears stationary at exactly 45 rpm is possible, and would require 400 segments advancing by 3 segments on each pulse of light.
(Dividing the strobe frequency (100 Hz as the lamp lights every half-cycle) by the record speed in revolutions per second (0.75 rev/sec for a 45 rpm record) and stating the answer as an improper fraction gives the number of segments in the numerator and the number of segments advanced in the denominator. In the example above: 100 Hz x 4/3 = 400/3, 400 segments, advancing 3 segments on each pulse of light. Compare with 60 Hz: 120 Hz x 4/3 = 160 segments, 1 segment per pulse.)
A number of recordings were pressed at 16⅔ rpm (usually a 7-inch disc, visually identical to a 45 rpm single). Peter Goldmark, the man who developed the 33⅓ rpm record, developed the Highway Hi-Fi 16⅔ rpm record to be played in Chrysler automobiles, but poor performance of the system and weak implementation by Chrysler and Columbia led to the demise of the 16⅔ rpm records. Subsequently, the 16⅔ rpm speed was used for radio transcription discs or narrated publications for the blind and visually impaired, and were never widely commercially available, although it was common to see new turntable models with a 16 rpm speed setting produced as late as the 1970s.
Seeburg Corporation introduced the Seeburg Background Music System in 1959, using a 16⅔ rpm 9-inch record with 2-inch center hole. Each record held 40 minutes of music per side, recorded at 420 grooves per inch.[32]
The older 78 format continued to be mass produced alongside the newer formats until about 1960 in the U.S., and in a few countries, such as India (where some Beatles recordings were issued on 78), into the 1960s. For example, Columbia Records' last reissue of Frank Sinatra songs on 78 rpm records was an album called Young at Heart, issued November 1, 1954.[33] As late as the 1970s, some children's records were released at the 78 rpm speed. In the United Kingdom, the 78 rpm single lasted longer than in the United States and the 45 rpm took longer to become popular. The 78 rpm was overtaken in popularity by the 45 rpm in the late 1950s, as teenagers became increasingly affluent.
Some of Elvis Presley's early singles on Sun Records may have sold more copies on 78 than on 45. This is assumed because the majority of those sales in 1954-55 were to the hillbilly market in the South and Southwestern United States, where replacing the family 78 rpm player with a new 45 rpm player was a luxury few could afford at the time. By the end of 1957, RCA Victor announced that 78s accounted for less than 10% of Presley's singles sales, essentially announcing the death throes of the 78 rpm format. The last Presley single released on 78 in the United States was RCA Victor 20-7410, I Got Stung / One Night (1958), while the last 78 in the UK was RCA 1194, A Mess Of Blues / Girl Of My Best Friend (1960).
The commercial rivalry between RCA Victor and Columbia Records led to RCA Victor's introduction of what it had intended to be a competing vinyl format, the 7-inch (175 mm) 45 rpm disc. For a two-year period from 1948 to 1950, record companies and consumers faced uncertainty over which of these formats would ultimately prevail in what was known as the War of the Speeds. (See also format war.) In 1949 Capitol and Decca adopted the new LP format and RCA gave in and issued its first LP in January 1950. The 45 rpm size was gaining in popularity, too, and Columbia issued its first 45s in February 1951. By 1954, 200 million 45s had been sold.[34]
Eventually the 12-inch (300 mm) 33⅓ rpm LP prevailed as the predominant format for musical albums and 10-inch LPs were no longer issued. The last Columbia Records reissue of any Frank Sinatra songs on a 10-inch LP record was an album called Hall of Fame, CL 2600, issued October 26, 1956, containing six songs, one each by Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Ray, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and Frankie Laine.[33] The 10-inch LP however had a longer life in the United Kingdom, where important early British rock and roll albums such as Lonnie Donegan's Lonnie Donegan Showcase and Billy Fury's
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