78 RPM Disc Developments

Hungarian Pathé record, 90 to 100 rpm

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 7-inch discs with an advertised standard speed of “about 70 rpm”.

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. It says that spring drives 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.”

A multinational product: a duet sung in Italian, recorded in the U.S. in 1906 by the Victor Talking Machine Company, manufactured c. 1908 in Hanover, Germany forThe Gramophone Company, Victor’s affiliate in England.

By 1925, the speed of the record was becoming standardized at a nominal value of 78 rpm. However, the standard was to differ between countries with their alternating current electricity supply running at 60 cycles per second (now Hertz) and the rest of the world. The actual 78 speed within regions with 60 Hertz mains was 78.26 rpm, being the speed of a 3600 rpm synchronous motor reduced by 46:1 gearing. Throughout other countries, 77.92 rpm was adopted being the speed of a 3000 rpm synchronous motor powered by a 50 Hz supply and reduced by 77:2 gearing.

“Acoustical” recording

Early recordings were made entirely acoustically, the sound being collected by a horn and piped to a diaphragm which vibrated the cutting stylus. Sensitivity and frequency range were poor, and frequency response was very irregular, giving acoustic recordings an instantly recognizable tonal quality. A singer practically had to put his face in the recording horn. Lower orchestral instruments such as cellos and double basses were often doubled (or replaced) by louder wind instruments, such as tubas. Standard violins in orchestral ensembles were commonly replaced by Stroh violins which became popular with recording studios.

Contrary to popular belief, if placed properly and prepared-for, drums could be effectively used and heard on even the earliest jazz and military band recordings. The loudest instruments stood the farthest away from the collecting horn. Lillian Hardin Armstrong, a member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band that 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 fifteen feet over in the corner, looking all sad.”

For level fading instrumental parts in and out while recording, some performers were placed on a moveable platform, which could draw the performer(s) nearer or further away as required.

“Electrical” recording

An “electrically” (electronically) recorded disc from Carl Lindström AG, Germany, c. 1930

During the first half of the 1920s, engineers at Western Electric, as well as independent inventors such asOrlando Marsh, developed technology for capturing sound with a microphone, amplifying it with vacuum tubes, then using the amplified signal to drive an electromagnetic recording head. Western Electric’s innovations resulted in a greatly expanded and more even frequency response, creating a dramatically fuller, clearer and more natural-sounding recording. Distant or feeble sounds that were impossible to record by the old method could now be captured. Volume was limited only by the groove spacing on the record and the limitations of the intended playback device. Victor and Columbia licensed the new system from Western Electric and began issuing electrically recorded discs in 1925.

Although the technology used vacuum tubes and today would be described as “electronic”, at the time it was referred to as “electrical”. A 1926 Wanamaker’s ad in The New York Times offers records “by the latest Victor process of electrical recording.”  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.”

Examples of Congolese 78 rpm records

A 10-inch Decelith blank for making an individually cut one-off recording. A German product introduced in 1937, these flexible all-plastic discs were a European alternative to rigid-based lacquer (“acetate”) discs.

Electrical recording preceded electrical home reproduction because of the initial high cost of the electronics. In 1925, the Victor company introduced the groundbreaking Victor Orthophonic Victrola, an acoustical record player that was specifically designed to play electrically recorded discs, as part of a line that also included electrically reproducing “Electrolas.” The acoustical Orthophonics ranged in price from US$95 to US$300, depending on cabinetry; by comparison, the cheapest Electrola cost US$650, the price of a new Ford automobile in an era when clerical jobs paid about $20 a week.

The Orthophonic had an interior folded exponential horn, a sophisticated design informed by impedance-matching and transmission-linetheory, and designed to provide a relatively flat frequency response. Its first public demonstration was front-page news in the New York Times, which reported that:

“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], or five and a half octaves … The ‘phonograph tone’ is eliminated by the new recording and reproducing process.”

Gradually, electrical reproduction entered the home. The spring motor was replaced by an electric motor. The old “sound box” with its needle-linked diaphragm was replaced by an electromagnetic “pickup” that converted the needle vibrations into an electrical signal. The “tone arm” now served to conduct a pair of wires, not sound waves, into the cabinet. The exponential horn was replaced by an amplifier and a loudspeaker.

78 rpm materials

The earliest disc records (1889–1894) were made of various materials including hard rubber. Around 1895, a shellac-based compound was introduced and became standard. Exact formulas for this compound varied by manufacturer and over the course of time, but it was typically composed of about one-third shellac and about two-thirds “mineral filler”, which meant finely pulverized rock, usually slate andlimestone, with an admixture of cotton fibers to add tensile strength, carbon black for color (without this, it tended to be a “dirty” gray or brown color that most record companies considered unattractive), and a very small amount of a lubricant to facilitate mold release during manufacture. Some makers, notably Columbia Records, used a laminated construction with a core disc of coarser material or fiber. The production of shellac records continued until the end of the 78 rpm format (i.e., the late 1950s in most developed countries, but well into the 1960s in some other places), but increasingly less abrasive formulations were used during its declining years and very late examples in truly like-new condition can be nearly as noiseless as vinyl.

Flexible or so-called “unbreakable” records made of unusual materials were introduced by a number of manufacturers at various times during the 78 rpm era. In the UK, Nicole records, made of celluloid or a similar substance coated onto a cardboard core disc, were produced for a few years beginning in 1904, but they suffered from an exceptionally high level of surface noise. In the United States, Columbia Records introduced flexible, fiber-cored “Marconi Velvet Tone Record” pressings in 1907, but the advantages and longevity of their relatively noiseless surfaces depended on the scrupulous use of special gold-plated Marconi Needles and the product was not a success. Thin, flexible plastic records such as the German Phonycord and the British Filmophone and Goodson records appeared around 1930 but also did not last long. The contemporary French Pathé Cellodiscs, made of a very thin black plastic which uncannily resembles the vinyl “sound sheet” magazine inserts of the 1965-1985 era, were similarly short-lived. In the United States, Hit of the Week Records, made of a patented blend of transparent plastic on a heavy brown paper base called Durium, were introduced in early 1930. A new issue came out every week and they were available at newsstands like a weekly magazine. Although inexpensive and moderately popular at first, they soon fell victim to the Great Depression and production ceased in the United States in 1932. Related Durium records continued to be made somewhat later in the UK and elsewhere, and as remarkably late as 1950 in Italy, where the name “Durium” survived far into the LP era as a trademark on ordinary vinyl records. Despite all these attempts at innovation, shellac compounds continued to be used for the overwhelming majority of commercial 78 rpm records during the life of the format.

In 1931, RCA Victor introduced their vinyl-based “Victrolac” compound as a material for some unusual-format and special-purpose records. By the end of the 1930s vinyl’s advantages of light weight, relative unbreakability and low surface noise had made it the material of choice for prerecorded radio programming and a number of other uses. When it came to ordinary 78 rpm records, however, the much higher cost of the raw material, as well as its vulnerability to the heavy pickups and crudely mass-produced steel needles still commonly used in home record players, made its general substitution for shellac impractical at that time. During the Second World War, the United States Armed Forces produced thousands of 12-inch 78 rpm V-Discs for use by the troops overseas, as well as 16-inch 33 1/3 rpm War Department radio transcriptions, all of which were made of vinyl.  After the war, the wider use of vinyl became more practical as new record players with lightweight ceramic pickups and precision styli made of sapphire or a very hard and durableosmium alloy started to proliferate. Victor issued some classical music on transparent red vinyl “De Luxe” 78s at a de luxe price, and Decca introduced vinyl “Deccalite” 78s, but other labels confined their use of vinyl to the special thin vinyl DJ pressings of 78s commonly mailed to radio stations during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

78 rpm disc size

In the 1890s, the recording formats of the earliest (toy) discs were mainly 12.5 cm (nominally five inches) in diameter; by the mid-1890s, the discs were usually 7 in (nominally 17.5 cm) in diameter. By 1910 the 10-inch (25.4 cm) record was by far the most popular standard, holding about three minutes of music or other entertainment on a side. From 1903 onwards, 12-inch records (30.5 cm) were also sold commercially, mostly of classical music or operatic selections, with four to five minutes of music per side. Victor, Brunswick and Columbia also issued 12-inch popular medleys, usually spotlighting a Broadway show score. However, other sizes did appear. Eight-inch discs with a 2-inch-diameter (51 mm) label became popular for about a decade in Britain, but they cannot be played in full on most modern record players because the tone arm cannot play far enough in toward the center without modification of the equipment.

78 rpm recording time

The playing time of a phonograph record depended on the turntable speed and the groove spacing. At the beginning of the 20th century, the early discs played for two minutes, the same as early cylinder records.  The 12-inch disc, introduced by Victor in 1903, increased the playing time to three and a half minutes.  Because a 10-inch 78 rpm record could hold about three minutes of sound per side and the 10-inch size was the standard size for popular music, almost all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length.

For example, when King Oliver‘s Creole Jazz Band, including Louis Armstrong on his first recordings, recorded 13 sides at Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, in 1923, one side was 2:09 and four sides were 2:52–2:59.

By 1938, when Milt Gabler started recording on January 17 for his new label, Commodore Records, to allow longer continuous performances, he recorded some 12-inch records.Eddie Condon explained: “Gabler realized that a jam session needs room for development.” The first two 12-inch recordings did not take advantage of the extra length: “Carnegie Drag” was 3:15; “Carnegie Jump”, 2:41. But, at the second session, on April 30, the two 12-inch recordings were longer: “Embraceable You” was 4:05; “Serenade to a Shylock”, 4:32.

Another way around the time limitation was to issue a selection on both sides of a single record. Vaudeville stars Gallagher and Shean, recorded “Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean”, written by Irving and Jack Kaufman, as two-sides of a 10-inch 78 in 1922 for Cameo.

An obvious workaround for longer recordings was to release a set of records. An early multi-record release was in 1903, when HMV in England made the first complete recording of an opera, Verdi‘s Ernani, on 40 single-sided discs.  In 1940, Commodore released Eddie Condon and his Band’s recording of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” in four parts, issued on both sides of two 12-inch 78s.

This limitation on the duration of recordings persisted from 1910 until the invention of the LP record, in 1948.

In popular music, this time limitation of about 3:30 on a 10-inch 78 rpm record meant that singers usually did not release long pieces on record. One exception is Frank Sinatra‘s recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s “Soliloquy“, from Carousel, made on May 28, 1946. Because it ran 7:57, longer than both sides of a standard 78 rpm 10-inch record, it was released on Columbia‘s Masterwork label (the classical division) as two sides of a 12-inch record.  The same was true of John Raitt‘s performance of the song on the original cast album of Carousel, which had been issued on a 78-RPM album set by American Decca in 1945.

In the 78 era, classical-music and spoken-word items generally were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, about 4–5 minutes per side. For example, on June 10, 1924, four months after the February 12 premier of Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of the seventeen-minute work with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. It was released on two sides of Victor 55225 and runs 8:59.