It has dawned on me that the length of time most network shows can go without a commercial is about three minutes. Why, do you think?
Come to think of it, 78s ran about that long, too.
How many insects have 3-minute life spans?
a 45 PPM was around 4 minutes.
a 78 RPM was between 3 and 5 minutes.
El Paso by Marty Robbins came in an original 4:38 and 3 minute version when released as a single. Top 40 AM radio may have had more to do with the time there.
Edison cylinders were between 2 and 4 minutes.
Because your stopwatch is broken? The typical act length is six or seven minutes.
There’s the makings of an interesting question (to me) in the OP – something like, “can we trace the typical length of musical pieces over time and/or across cultures, and if we can, does this tell us anything about typical attention spans?”
Not easy to do, I’m sure. One difficulty is in “art” music vs. “popular” music – Brahms was writing 18-minute chamber music movements when most people in the home were more likely playing 3-minute square dance reels or Stephen Foster songs for each other – but ???
when music was live it could be as long as the audience would sit still.
early recording was acoustic, all the sound power came from the recording, so the speed of the playback was high and then the time duration short.
even with early electric there were limitations until mechanism and materials advanced to make smaller grooves.
there was likely popular live music which could be different from popular recorded music.
before recorded music it was common for families or neighbors to have instruments and play music for themselves. you learned by ear or bought sheet music.
Early movies ran about a minute, and then gradually got longer and longer until they reached about 90 minutes for comedies and 120 minutes for dramas. But this was in the same period as political speeches were still considered entertainment and often ran an hour or several. It wasn’t until radio that shorter speeches became the norm.
Today it’s possible to play video games for literal days at a time. People also binge watch entire seasons of tv shows.
That’s just another few data points to add to the heap. The argument about attention span won’t stand up to even minimal scrutiny for ten seconds.
The length of a single was set at around 2.5 mins. before the 45rpm record was invented, as that’s about all you could squeeze onto a shellac single (usually 10" but other sizes were also available). A recording of around 3 mins. remained the norm till lazer cutting of dies came in, allowing for much more accurate molding of vinyl. We now consider a 3 min. single to be the norm. It’s a bit like why we still use the QWERTY keyboard - odd technological habits die hard.
I remember a documentary on Tin Pan Alley in which it was said that the length of a popular song was determined early on by the recording capacity of an Edison cylinder.