A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is a disc-shaped analog sound storage medium with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the outside edge and ends near the center of the disc. The stored sound information is made audible by playing the record on a phonograph (or "gramophone", "turntable", or "record player").
Records have been produced in different formats with playing times ranging from a few minutes to around 30 minutes per side. For about half a century, the discs were commonly made from shellac and these records typically ran at a rotational speed of 78 rpm, giving it the nickname "78s" ("seventy-eights"). "Vinyl" records made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) were introduced in 1948, and by 1958 they became standard, replacing the old 78s and remain so to this day; they have since been produced in various sizes and speeds, most commonly discs played at 45 rpm (typically for singles, also called 45s ("forty-fives")), and discs played at rpm (known as LP's, "long-playing records", typically for full-length albums) – the latter is the most prevalent format today.
Overview
The phonograph record was the primary medium used for music reproduction throughout the 20th century. It had co-existed with the phonograph cylinder from the late 1880s and had effectively superseded it by around 1912. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as the compact cassette were mass-marketed. By the 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc (CD), had gained a larger market share, and the record left the mainstream in 1991.It's almost final for vinyl: Record manufacturers dwindle in the U.S. . Kitchener – Waterloo Record – Kitchener, Ont., 9 January 1991. Since the 1990s, records continue to be manufactured and sold on a smaller scale, and during the 1990s and early 2000s were commonly used by disc jockeys (DJs), especially in dance music genres. They were also listened to by a growing number of audiophiles. The phonograph record has made a niche resurgence in the early 21st century, growing increasingly popular throughout the 2010s and 2020s.
Phonograph records are generally described as a single or LP for long playing or their diameter in , , ), the rotational speed in revolutions per minute (rpm) at which they are played (, , , 45, 78),The 2 slower speeds used by the Library of Congress to supply the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. and their time capacity, determined by their diameter and speed (LP [long play], disc, rpm; EP [extended play], disc or disc, or 45 rpm; Single, or disc, 45 or 78 rpm); their reproductive quality, or level of fidelity (high-fidelity, orthophonic, full-range, etc.); and the number of audio channels (mono, stereo, quad, etc.).
Naming The various names have included phonograph record (American English), gramophone record (British English), record, vinyl, LP (originally a trademark of Columbia Records), black disc, album, and more informally platter, wax, or liquorice pizza.
Early development Manufacture of disc records began in the late 19th century, at first competing with earlier cylinder records. Price, ease of use and storage made the disc record dominant by the 1910s. The standard format of disc records became known to later generations as "78s" after their playback speed in revolutions per minute, although that speed only became standardized in the late 1920s. In the late 1940s, new formats pressed in vinyl, the 45-rpm single and 33-rpm long playing LP, were introduced, gradually overtaking the formerly standard "78s" over the next decade. The late 1950s saw the introduction of stereophonic sound on commercial discs.
Predecessors
The phonautograph was invented by 1857 by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. It could not, however, play back recorded sound, as he intended for people to read back the tracings, which he called phonautograms. Prior to this, tuning forks had been used in this way to create direct tracings of the vibrations of sound-producing objects, as by English physicist Thomas Young in 1807.
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first phonograph, which etched sound recordings onto phonograph cylinders. Unlike the phonautograph, Edison's phonograph could both record and reproduce sound, via two separate needles, one for each function.
The first disc records
The first commercially sold disc records were created by Emile Berliner in the 1880s. Emile Berliner improved the quality of recordings while his manufacturing associate Eldridge R. Johnson, who owned a machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, eventually improved the mechanism of the gramophone with a spring motor and a speed regulating governor, resulting in a sound quality equal to Edison's cylinders. Abandoning Berliner's "Gramophone" trademark for legal reasons in the United States, Johnson's and Berliner's separate companies reorganized in 1901 to form the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, whose products would come to dominate the market for several decades.
Berliner's Montreal factory, which became the Canadian branch of RCA Victor, still exists. There is a dedicated museum in Montreal for Berliner (Musée des ondes Emile Berliner).
78 rpm disc developments
Early speeds
Early disc recordings were produced in a variety of speeds ranging from 60 to 130 rpm, and a variety of sizes. As early as 1894, Emile Berliner's United States Gramophone Company was selling single-sided discs with an advertised standard speed of "about 70 rpm".Ober, Norman (1973). "You Can Thank Emil Berliner for the Shape Your Record Collection Is In". Music Educators Journal, Vol. 60, No. 4 (December 1973), pp. 38–40.
One standard audio recording handbook describes speed regulators, or governors, as being part of a wave of improvement introduced rapidly after 1897. A picture of a hand-cranked 1898 Berliner Gramophone shows a governor and says that spring drives had replaced hand drives. It notes that:
The speed regulator was furnished with an indicator that showed the speed when the machine was running so that the records, on reproduction, could be revolved at exactly the same speed...The literature does not disclose why 78 rpm was chosen for the phonograph industry, apparently this just happened to be the speed created by one of the early machines and, for no other reason continued to be used.
In 1912, the Gramophone Company set 78 rpm as their recording standard, based on the average of recordings they had been releasing at the time, and started selling players whose governors had a nominal speed of 78 rpm. By 1925, 78 rpm was becoming standardized across the industry. However, the exact speed differed between places with alternating current electricity supply at 60 hertz (cycles per second, Hz) and those at 50 Hz. Where the mains supply was 60 Hz, the actual speed was 78.26 rpm: that of a 60 Hz stroboscope illuminating 92-bar calibration markings. Where it was 50 Hz, it was 77.92 rpm: that of a 50 Hz stroboscope illuminating 77-bar calibration markings.
At least one attempt to lengthen playing time was made in the early 1920s. World Records produced records that played at a constant linear velocity, controlled by Noel Pemberton Billing's patented add-on speed governor.
Acoustic recording Early recordings were made entirely acoustically: sound was collected by a horn and piped to a diaphragm, which vibrated the cutting stylus. Sensitivity and frequency range were poor, and frequency response was irregular, giving acoustic recordings an instantly recognizable tonal quality. A singer almost had to put their face in the recording horn. A way of reducing resonance was to wrap the recording horn with tape.Scholes, plate 73.
Even drums, if placed properly, could be effectively recorded and heard on even the earliest jazz and military band recordings. The loudest instruments, like drums and trumpets, were positioned further away from the collecting horn. Lillian Hardin Armstrong, a member of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, which recorded at Gennett Records in 1923, remembered that at first Oliver and his young second trumpet, Louis Armstrong, stood next to each other and Oliver's horn could not be heard. "They put Louis about over in the corner, looking all sad."Rick Kennedy, Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Studios and the Birth of Recorded Jazz, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 63–64.A photograph of the Gennett Records studio is available.
Electrical recording
During the first half of the 1920s, engineers at Western Electric, as well as independent inventors such as Orlando Marsh, developed technology for capturing sound with a microphone, amplifying it with vacuum tubesJacques Chailley – 40,000 Years of Music: Man in Search of Music – 1964 p. 144, "On March 21st, 1925, Alfred Cortot made for the Victor Talking Machine Co., in Camden, New Jersey, the first classical recording to employ a new technique, thanks to which the gramophone was to play an important part in musical life: electric ..." (known as valves in the UK), and then using the amplified signal to drive an electromechanical recording head. Western Electric's innovations resulted in a broader and smoother frequency response, which produced a dramatically fuller, clearer and more natural-sounding recording. Soft or distant sounds that were previously impossible to record could now be captured. Volume was now limited only by the groove spacing on the record and the amplification of the playback device. Victor and Columbia licensed the new electrical system from Western Electric and recorded the first electrical discs during the spring of 1925. The first electrically recorded Victor Red Seal record was Chopin's "Impromptus" and Schubert's "Litanei" performed by pianist Alfred Cortot at Victor's studios in Camden, New Jersey.
A 1926 Wanamaker's ad in The New York Times offers records "by the latest Victor process of electrical recording".Wanamaker (16 January 1926). Wanamaker's ad in The New York Times, 16 January 1926, p. 16. It was recognized as a breakthrough; in 1930, a Times music critic stated: ... the time has come for serious musical criticism to take account of performances of great music reproduced by means of the records. To claim that the records have succeeded in exact and complete reproduction of all details of symphonic or operatic performances ... would be extravagant ... [but] the article of today is so far in advance of the old machines as hardly to admit classification under the same name. Electrical recording and reproduction have combined to retain vitality and color in recitals by proxy.Pakenham, Compton (1930), "Recorded Music: A Wide Range". The New York Times, February 23, 1930, p. 118
The Orthophonic Victrola had an interior folded exponential horn, a sophisticated design informed by impedance-matching and transmission-line theory, and designed to provide a relatively flat frequency response. Victor's first public demonstration of the Orthophonic Victrola on 6 October 1925, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was front-page news in The New York Times, which reported: The audience broke into applause ... John Philip Sousa [said]: '[Gentlemen], that is a band. This is the first time I have ever heard music with any soul to it produced by a mechanical talking machine' ... The new instrument is a feat of mathematics and physics. It is not the result of innumerable experiments, but was worked out on paper in advance of being built in the laboratory ... The new machine has a range of from 100 to 5,000 [cycles per second], or five and a half octaves ... The 'phonograph tone' is eliminated by the new recording and reproducing process.The New York Times (1925-10-07). "New Music Machine Thrills All Hearers At First Test Here". Front page.