78s were already long obsolete when I was a kid, but we had some and I vaguely remember them as being fairly heavy and brittle.
National Geographic did it, too. I remember one of whale song.
McDonalds had a “$1M Menu Song” promotion that gave away floppy records in 1988 which must have been the very tail end of that media’s widespread availability. I’m certain we did NOT have a record player in the house at the time.
Many of the users of the slower speeds (16 2/3 and 8 /13) were blind. Spoken word records were useful for people who couldn’t read. At those slow speeds, each side held more content, so they didn’t have to be turned over or changed as often.
78 RPM records were actually supposed to rotate at 78.26 RPM. That number was used because a disc with 92 radial lines rotating at that speed appears stationary under a light flashing at 60 Hz. This works best with a strobe, but even the small amount of flicker from an incandescent light will produce the effect. In Europe and other countries with 50 Hz electrical power, the standard speed was 77.92 RPM (a disc with 77 lines will appear stationary at that speed under a 50 Hz light).
With 60 Hz power, 45 RPM can be tuned with a 160-line disc, while with 50 Hz power, you can tune to 45.11 RPM with a 133-line disc. 33 1/3 RPM can be tuned with a 216-line disc using 60 Hz, and a 180-line disc using 50 Hz.
It took a while for the recording industry to settle on 78 RPM as a standard. Edison records used 80 RPM. So did early Columbias. Early Victors used 76.59 RPM. The weirdest records were from the Pathé company. They made some records with a speed of 120 RPM and a diameter of around 20 inches. They were intended for public address in the days before electrical amplification, so to get volume they had a very high linear groove speed. Those 20-inch Pathés are rare today.
Most of the recording industry settled on 78 RPM around 1925, when electrical recording became common. But some companies didn’t adhere well to the standard. There were Deccas that were recorded at speeds as high as 81 RPM well into the 1930s. The pitch difference between 78.26 and 81 is more than a quarter tone.
I also used to collect 78s. I still have about 50 of them, and a record player you just wind. I had to learn how to sharpen the needles for it, because the wear out to giving very poor sound after about 4 sides. I have a bottle of several hundred needles I bought for it many years ago.
I also have a few 16s of Talking Books for the Blind. They are thick. This is just a guess, but they probably weigh as much as a 33 1/3 LP, coming in at the same weight, but thicker, and less likely to crack or chip during shipping-- they were shipped a lot. They probably had less of a tendency to warp as well.
Also, my windable player has a slide that controls the speed, and it’s marked 78 in the middle, 45 at one end, and 16 at the other, and this is pretty much true. It will play a side of a 45, and the sound is nothing to brag about, but you can understand what people are saying, and what the instruments are.
The 16s are perfectly understandable too-- pretty good quality, in fact, but the player is losing wind-up power toward the end. The reason there is a slide and not a switch is that a lot of people bought records to dance to at parties-- they are all marked with things like “Foxtrot” or whatever is the best dance for them. Anyway, you could dance faster or slower by speeding the record up or down.
The electric player of my parents that we used my whole childhood, and worked on through about 1992 was something my father bought in the 50s. It had a switch for all 4 speeds.
Are these recordings digitally archived somewhere? If not, what would happened if these physical records disappeared? Would those recordings be gone forever?
People are on it …
https://great78.archive.org/
Mentioned on this weeks episode of QI. They had to print 10.5 million copies and earned some kind of world record. Details sketchy as I stopped listening when they mentioned whale music.
Edison Records were played at 80RPM in England. Don’t know why.
As kids, one of our gang used to play the 45 of Crimson and Clover on 33 and mime that he was straining on the toilet to it. At the time, that was the height of hilarity.
Charles Berlitz produced a series of learning language records that were 16.667 RPM. Then later, he almost single-handedly invented the Bermuda Triangle craze. Think there’s a connection?
I read or heard somewhere, possibly here, that when LPs were introduced in the late 1940s, the record companies had to determine which of their artists would be carried over onto the new format. They could not afford to switch everyone’s catalogs over, and for those who were not transitioned it became a death sentence to their career. Many promising artists lost their opportunity to realize their potential.
mmm
Not just England, but everywhere. Edison had his own way of doing things. He stuck with vertical records longer than anyone else (i.e. records where the groove went up and down, not side to side). He stuck with acoustically recorded records long after the other companies converted to electrical recording. He stuck with 80 RPM after everyone else went with 78.26 RPM. Edison records were made of different materials, and were extra-thick (like a quarter of an inch).
Isn’t the way that we have stereo is that those records do both?
Are “acetates” synonymous with those temporary flexible discs?
I often hear accounts of musicians and recording studios distributing “acetates” to demo songs.
No. Acetates are basically blank discs that are then cut with a cutting lathe. This is much less expensive than making the various masters (sorry…that’s what they were called) and pressing vinyl records. The two major problems with this process are (1) each record has to be cut individually and (2) they wear out faster after multiple plays. They are usually much thicker and heavier than what we would think of as a modern LP disc. It was an inexpensive and easy way to get records out to DJs or to record companies. They were often sent out with typed labels literally pasted to the center to identify the contents, performers, agents, etc.
But, over the years, the term “acetate” has been used in reference to a lot of different types of disc, so confusion is understandable.
I have a fairly large collection of acetates. They often have completely different track listings/track orders than the final album releases.
With stereo records, the modulations are at 45 degrees, neither vertical nor horizontal. The left channel is on one wall of the groove, and the right channel is on the other. It was done this way so that older mono cartridges could mix the two signals together by taking the horizontal component of each groove wall and adding the two channels together. To make this work, one channel is inverted (i.e. the groove walls are 180 degrees out of phase with each other). Without this inversion, the vertical components would cancel each other. A stereo playback system will invert one of the channels to get proper imaging (stereo played with one of the channels inverted will have poor imaging, that it, the sound will be spread between the two speakers, instead of sounding like each voice and instrument has a particular location).
If you play a vertically-cut mono record on a modern stereo and mix the two channels together to mono, you will get mostly noise. The signal from the two channels will be inverses of each other, so when you mix them, the signal will cancel out. Some specialty pre-amps have a setting for vertically cut records that invert one of the channels, just for this reason.
BTW, mixing a 78 RPM record to mono usually eliminates a lot of noise. On a horizontally-cut record, all the signal is in the horizontal component, and the vertical component will be all noise. Adding the two channels together causes the vertical noise to cancel out. This can be done by wiring the cartridge for mono playback, or using the mono setting of the pre-amp.
Vertical modulation can have tracking problems, especially with loud bass signals. A vigorous up-and-down motion can make the stylus lose contact with the groove, and even make it skip.
IIRC, it’s to get separate channels - left goes 45° one way, and right goes 45° the other way, so the two channels can produce inependent sounds. At the time this became a thing, I recall warnings not to play stereo records on a mono player (mono needle) because the needle did not “give” vertically so would slowly wear away the grooves of the record.
Actually, one signal is L+R, the other is L-R. When added, you get 2L, when subtracted you get -2R.