[78-L] Story of the LP

[Michael Shoshani]

On Sun, 2008-11-16 at 14:59 +0000, John Wright wrote:
> BBC Radio 2 have an upcoming four part weekly series on the history of 
> the LP, from Tuesday 18th
> 
> Is it 60 years since they started commercially?

Actually, no.

It's 60 years since the COLUMBIA (US) 12" 33 1/3 RPM Long Playing record
was introduced in 1948, but that was preceded by several long playing
record formats of limited success. Victor had one in the early 1930s
(coarse groove, 33 1/3 RPM), Edison had TWO in the 1920s - one for the
home market that had an extremely fine groove and played at 80 RPM, and
another for radio stations, vending machines and jukeboxes that had a
fine groove and played at 30 RPM. And there was one in England, I
believe called World Records, that had a constantly adjusting speed from
outer rim to inner label.

Then of course, Western Electric was providing cinemas with 33 1/3 RPM
Vitaphone soundtrack discs, that provided about 11 minutes - the length
of a single reel - in 1929. Radio transcriptions of 33 1/3 RPM came
about a few years later.