Why the 45?
One of my friends at work mentioned that 45s -- 7-inch records that turn at 45 rpm -- were invented for jukeboxes. I challenged that, saying that RCA was caught flat footed by Columbia's introduction of the Lp in 1948 and rushed out an incompatible format, and that the large center hole was to build a more reliable changer.
He disagreed and I countered that I'd dig up RCA's paper where they "prove" that 45 rpm is the best speed for a record, with no mention of jukeboxes or the "single" that later became the main use of 45s. Needless to say, this took me down the rabbit hole of old papers, recorded here.
The RCA paper is at one my favorite resources, worldradiohistory.com:
- B. R. Carson, A. D. Burt, and H. I. Reiskind, "A Record Changer and Record of Complementary Design," RCA Review, Jun 1949, page 173 (page 17 in the PDF). https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Review/RCA-Review-1949-Jun.pdf
Probably the most famous example was getting Harry Olson (inventor of the ribbon microphone and the prominent acoustician in the early-to-mid 20th century) to publicly endorse the terrible DynaGroove system.
Here's Columbia's paper on the Lp. Note it's a peer reviewed journal (Transactions of the IRE) vs. RCA's in-house journal.
- P.C. Goldmark; R. Snepvangers; W.S. Bachman, "The Columbia Long-Playing Microgroove Recording System." Proceedings of the IRE ( Volume: 37, Issue: 8, Aug. 1949) http://www.one-electron.com/Archives/Audio/AudioJournals/Goldmark%20et%20al%201949%20The%20Columbia%20Long-Playing%20Microgroove%20Recording%20System.pdf
Somewhere I have a copy a paper from Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) that my friend Don Drewecki sent me on the development of the Lp that goes into Wallerstein's survey of classical music and Rene Snepvanger's technical work developing the disk cutting techniques for microgroove records. (if I find it, I'll update this post).
More on the Lp:
- https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2019/04/inside-the-archival-box-the-first-long-playing-disc/
- https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-High-Fidelity/50s/High-Fidelity-1958-Jan.pdf
- https://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/frayne_history-of-disk-recording.pdf
- https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/attachment.php?s=ec61345ad026d39ca6013e84d53dbe70&attachmentid=194887&d=1575493040
- The 1949 Columbia records catalog at archive.org https://archive.org/details/columbiarecordca00unse_0
Finally a Youtube video on "the speed wars". It's pretty good and doesn't pull any punches about RCA. My only quibble is when he says that the first Lps were 10-inch. I think there were one or two 10-inch records in the first batch of Lp, but the rest were 12-inch. This is backed up by the 1949 Columbia records catalog linked above. Note that Wallerstein was at RCA, then Columbia, and later Everest/Beloch.
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