History of Records

Before the Vinyl record, or even the disc record came around, audio recordings were made on cylinder. Thomas edison was the first one to record the human voice. The recording was of someone singing "mary had a little lamb". The cylinder that this was recorded on was made of tinfoil. Thomas Edison was leter granted patent for the phonograph using tinfoil cylinders. Later on another type of cylinder was invented by Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter which was wax-coated and were played on a machine they called the Gramophone. In 1887 Emile Berliner created a new type of Gramophone which instead of using wax cylinders, used a 7 inch wax disc. In 1888 Emile Berliner created an improved Gramophone which was the first hard rubber vulcanite disc record to be mass-produced, and were only recorded on one side and only could hold 2 minutes of audio. In 1889 the columbia Phonograph company was created. In 1897 shellac discs replaced hard vulcanite. In 1902 Edison introduced gold molded cylinders which were coated with hard wax and meanwhile in Europe 10 inch discs replaced the 7 inch discs and had a 4 minute playtime. The Odeon label was created in Germany by the International Talking Machine Co. to sell double-sided discs that Zonophone had pioneered in South America in 1902, yet it was still impossible to put an entire symphony on a single disc that could play both sides for no more than 10 minutes. HMV in England recorded in 1903 the first complete opera, Verdi's "Ernani" on 40 single-sided discs. Odeon pioneered something called the "album" in 1909 when it released the "Nutcracker Suite" by Tchaikovsky on 4 double-sided discs in a specially-designed package. So that is how we now call any CD or record that we have an album. 1906 Columbia announced the laminated shellac disc with a paper core which had less surface noise. Edison introduced celluloid blue Amberol cylinders that played for 4 minutes in 1912. When played with a diamond stylus, the new cylinder had low surface noise that resulted in higher acoustic quality than flat discs. In 1913 Edison finally conceded victory to the flat disc when he began to sell the Diamond-Disc players and recordings. The Diamond discs had a surface of Condensite plastic laminated to a solid core and a thickness of 1/4 inch. Condensite was a resin plastic like Bakelite, the first artificial plastic patented in 1909 by Leo Baekeland. The players used the same Diamond Point Reproducer used in the Blue Amberols but tracked at heavier force. In 1926 Vitaphone Co. signed a contract April 20 with AT&T to develop sound pictures using the electrical recording system of Western Electric, using 16-inch acetate-coated shellac discs at the new recording speed of 33 1/3 rpm in synch with film reel by electric motors; Warner Bros. moved the Vitaphone studio to the Manhattan Opera House in May and made some short subject musical films such as Volga Boatman on May 24 before releasing Don Juan on Aug. 6, the first full-length film with sound recorded for the musical scenes. Finally in 1948 Columbia introduced on June 21 the first 12-inch 33-1/3 rpm micro-groove LP vinylite record with 23-minute per side capacity, developed by Peter Goldmark in 1947, using players made by Philco. And then 1949 in RCA Victor introduced 7-inch 45 rpm micro-groove Extended Play vinylite record and player; later records made of polystyrene. (In 1950 the 16 2/3 rpm record was introduced and was meant for recording spoken words, for the visually impaired and for educational purposes. They were not in the war of the speeds though). In September, Capitol became the first major label to support all three of 78, 45, 33-1/3 rpm, and the war of the speeds ended and it was settled for the two recording speeds to be 45 and 33 1/3 rpm. After that casettes came around starting with the 4 track which had 2 channels with 2 songs each, and then the 8 track which had 4 channels with two songs each. Then came the slim cassette as we know it, and finally the CD came in and made the vinyl records and cassettes obsolete.