# how wide would an LP be of every word ever spoken? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 2, 2020, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375 "2020-02-02T06:59:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2020, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/21 "2020-02-02T23:05:32Z")
If this is going to be a constant-angular-velocity (CAV) record with the same track density as an LP, I disagree that the record’s area is the relevant measure. It should be about radius. An LP has a radius of about 15 cm but the label doesn’t need to scale, so it’s only the sound part (about 10 cm or 1e-1 m) that represents 60 minutes (6e1 minutes). Multiply that by 5e15 as in **Chronos** ’ post, and you get 5e14 meters in radius, or 1e15 meters in diameter. (Plus about 10 cm for the label.) This is about 6.25e11 statute miles. The outside rim would be about 3.14e15 meters in length; if the whole thing needs to spin at 33.33 revolutions per minute, we’ve got a relativity problem. Even getting the needle to stay in the groove at those speeds is going to be a challenge. We really should be looking into making a constant-linear-velocity (CLV) disk instead. Then the area-based calculations would be appropriate. It complicates seeking a bit, though. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2020, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/22 "2020-02-03T04:07:50Z")
A 12-inch 33-RPM disc is sub-optimal. Start with a 16-inch 16 2/3 RPM turntable and extrapolate from there. Those used to distribute 1/2 hour radio shows per side. And since we’re only dealing with speech, go to 3 RPM and piezo cartridges. Who needs fidelity? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/23 "2020-02-04T13:05:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That part’s easy enough. An ordinary LP holds 6e1 minutes. We’ve set the amount of speech as 3e17 minutes. So we need an LP with an area 5e15 times greater. That means the diameter must be greater by a factor of the square root of that, or about 7e7. An ordinary LP has a 1-foot diameter, so we’d be looking at a 70 million foot diameter. A mile is about 5000 feet, so that’s be about 13 thousand miles, not much bigger than the Earth’s diameter of 8,000 miles. > > Though I think the speech figure is still too high. I interpret that stat as meaning that 30% of our communication time is talking (with the rest being gestures, writing, Instagram, etc.). And a lot of time we’re engaged in talk-communication, we’re listening to someone else, not talking ourselves. So not enough to “cover the Earth”. But maybe enough to cover Texas? Probably enough to cover Rhode Island. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/24 "2020-02-04T13:53:28Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > A 12-inch 33-RPM disc is sub-optimal. Start with a 16-inch 16 2/3 RPM turntable and extrapolate from there. Those used to distribute 1/2 hour radio shows per side. And since we’re only dealing with speech, go to 3 RPM and piezo cartridges. Who needs fidelity? That was my first thought - it doesn’t have to 33 rpm, it could be 16 or something even slower. I remember having a record player when I was a kid that had a 16 rpm setting, and my parents explained that they used to use that for spoken word records. (Us kids just used it to make our 33s and 45s sound funny.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/25 "2020-02-04T14:39:29Z")
And here, the OP thought he was avoiding questions of data compression by using a phonograph record. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/26 "2020-02-04T15:10:55Z")
How many grooves would this behemoth have? And have we accounted for the record having a flip side? ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/27 "2020-02-04T15:34:36Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > How many grooves would this behemoth have? And have we accounted for the record having a flip side? The “B” side would be entitled, “All the things people have wished they had said but thought of it too late.” ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/28 "2020-02-04T18:48:04Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > How many grooves would this behemoth have? And have we accounted for the record having a flip side? I’m not going to follow the math here, just assuming everyone is correct in their calculations, but the first question is easy, right? 1 groove per side. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/29 "2020-02-04T20:11:24Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > I’m not going to follow the math here, just assuming everyone is correct in their calculations, but the first question is easy, right? 1 groove per side. You’d think so, but occasionally novelty records had a ‘hidden’ groove that had extra material, including one of the Monty Python records I think. There were also horse-race game records, which had ?half a dozen grooves, so a group of people could bet on the outcome and then drop the needle, which would catch a random groove and play out a particular race. Not sure how that could be applied to the scenario, but you could maybe bet on alternate historical linguistic scenarios like - the last 2500 years of language if the Romans had lost the Punic Wars; if William hadn’t conquered; if the first Indo-Europeans had turned left at Albuquerque. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/30 "2020-02-06T16:15:05Z")
I particularly like the issues of the tracks at the speed of light (with apologies to Smokey Robinson). First off, on the purpose of the disk, to be heard I hope even by humans–playback amplifiers will need to calculate the relativistic correction for any number of things, not the least of which is how the damn thing can function in an acoustic environment of any sort. We’re not talking about playback by transmitting EM or other waves through a vacuum. Let’s get real here. Similarly, I can see that our imprint-vinyl recording being sub optimal, although taking the Earth-atmosphere acoustic frequencies and using super-duper transportation of some sort to lay down the grooves on the platter is conceivable. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/31 "2020-02-06T16:23:22Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > You’d think so, but occasionally novelty records had a ‘hidden’ groove that had extra material, including one of the Monty Python records I think. There were also horse-race game records, which had ?half a dozen grooves, so a group of people could bet on the outcome and then drop the needle, which would catch a random groove and play out a particular race. > > Not sure how that could be applied to the scenario, but you could maybe bet on alternate historical linguistic scenarios like - the last 2500 years of language if the Romans had lost the Punic Wars; if William hadn’t conquered; if the first Indo-Europeans had turned left at Albuquerque. You… people! With your fancy… knowledge and… facts and stuff! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/32 "2020-02-06T16:41:20Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > You’d think so, but occasionally novelty records had a ‘hidden’ groove that had extra material, including one of the Monty Python records I think. There were also horse-race game records, which had ?half a dozen grooves, so a group of people could bet on the outcome and then drop the needle, which would catch a random groove and play out a particular race. MAD Magazine included a flimsy plastic record like this in one of their monthly offerings. It was a song called “Super Spectacular Day” that started out all nice and optimistic, but then quickly turned dark. I want to say there were at least 5 tracks on that record. ETA: Found it. (Gawd bless the internet). [8 versions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mkHdnyr2RU). ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/33 "2020-02-06T17:19:05Z")
Ok, that’s nice and all, but how many TB SD card? ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2020, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/34 "2020-02-07T10:37:42Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > You’d think so, but occasionally novelty records had a ‘hidden’ groove that had extra material, including one of the Monty Python records I think. There were also horse-race game records, which had ?half a dozen grooves, so a group of people could bet on the outcome and then drop the needle, which would catch a random groove and play out a particular race. Ah, thank you! I had seen TV ads for such a horse-race game back in the 1980s, and always wondered how they could claim it was random if the user could put the needle down in the same spot every time. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2020, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/35 "2020-02-08T11:02:54Z")
An aside, but, last night Mrs. Napier was going on about how wonderful audiobooks are, as if every book should be an audiobook. And so of course I started thinking about audiobook dictionaries… ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2020, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/36 "2020-02-08T23:17:28Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > An aside, but, last night Mrs. Napier was going on about how wonderful audiobooks are, as if every book should be an audiobook. And so of course I started thinking about audiobook dictionaries… And audio phone directories, tech manuals, codebooks, atlases, cookbooks, the Voynich Manuscript, puzzle books, field guides, encyclopediae, etc. Blank pages are quiet. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2020, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/37 "2020-02-09T14:00:15Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > Blank pages are quiet. Thought they said “This page deliberately left quiet.” ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/38 "2020-02-09T19:01:03Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2020, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/39 "2020-02-09T19:50:10Z")
Back to OP. > [@curwin](#): > > If we were able to put every word ever spoken by a human on one LP record, how wide would that LP be? And if we placed the earth at the center of the record, how far out would it go - what body in space would the edge be near? He doesn’t ask for ALL speech of EVERY human but merely for words in human speech. Let’s limit this to Homo Sapiens Sapiens - Denisovans and Neandertals need not apply. The English language contains possibly upwards of 1/2 million words. [(cite)](https://www.lexico.com/explore/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language) but it’s pretty rich. Let’s say that 100,000 human languages (noted upthread) contain an average of 50,000 words each for a total of 5 billion words. (We’ll gloss-over polysynthetic languages that assemble simple syllables into complex “words”.) Let’s say that a word can on average be spoken in one second. Duration is thus a bit under 1.4 million hours, requiring the surface area of that many single-sided 12-inch 1-hour ELP discs, or about 444,000 square feet, rounded. That gives a diameter of about 750 feet, if my groggy, un-caffeinated brain didn’t muck the numbers. I welcome correction but I think that’s in the ballpark. Or Ikea parking lot. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2020, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/40 "2020-02-09T20:12:19Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > Back to OP. > > He doesn’t ask for ALL speech of EVERY human but merely for words in human speech. Let’s limit this to Homo Sapiens Sapiens - Denisovans and Neandertals need not apply. … The OP asked for ‘every word ever spoken by a human’, and you could interpret that both ways [Every Word Once, or All Words by All Humans]. However, some of us spelled out the quantity implied by the All words-All humans version, which he seemed to be very comfortable with. Curwin might help here by chiming in and clarifying this before we get too much more wacky mathematical minimalism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375.md?page=3)