[78-L] Talking about vinyl...

[Kristjan Saag]

Here's a little history lesson for all of us:

By the early 1900's, wax was also used to coat cardboard round flat plates, 
called discs or records.  Many different size discs and speeds were tried in 
the early days.  Recording inventors found there were three ways to increase 
the time of the recording on a disc: use larger discs (this was bulky); use 
slower speeds (and lose fidelity); or make the grooves narrower (they wear 
out too quickly if you use the wrong material, like wax).
As early as 1901, Victor records tried out a 7" record, but it was abandoned 
two years later in favor of the new standard - a 10" 78 RPM, wide groove wax 
disc.  It was the best combination of good fidelity and size to give a 
three-minute record.
In 1926 Vitaphone needed a method of putting sound to their silent movies. 
They wanted to do it by playing the movie sound track on record but didn't 
want to change records every 3 minutes.  So, they came out with a 16" 
record, recorded at 33-1/3 RPM and made of a new material, shellac.  Shellac 
was more durable than wax.  Shellac came from a tiny scale insect that 
infested trees in India.  It seems these slimy disgusting bugs were sucking 
the juice of the trees and excreting shellac continuously.  How someone 
thought of turning it into phonograph records is beyond us.

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Cute, isn't it?
Found at
http://www.classicurbanharmony.net/45%20Turns%20Sixty.htm
Kristjan