[78-L] 78-L How a Columbia Record is Made (silently)

[James Tennyson]

I find it odd that there are no pictures of W S Purser who was the Columbia 
technical head at this time. I suspect too that the amp that they are 
fiddling with  may not in fact be the one they are using to make the 
records. It may be one left over from Purser's experiments during 1924-25 
when he was developing his own electrical recording system that ultimately 
was not used as the WE system was deemed superior.
And speaking of Paris...the first shot of the studio door  has a notice in 
French  " Defense espresse d' entrer...." so I suspect the shots of 
Stravinski were taken in the Paris Studio. And if you look carefully at the 
recording lathe scenes you will see that they consist of  shots of two 
different studios edited so it appears to be the some one. The " eccentric 
amp" is in shot number two which makes me wonder if it in fact was a Western 
Electric product at all .

JRT

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 5:42 PM, Michael Shoshani 
<mshoshani at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

> On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 06:34 -1000, Malcolm Rockwell wrote:
> > I really dug the flute player with the shades on... in 1928! Crazy, man!
> > A close up of the cutting head would have been nice, but all in all very
> > interesting.
>
>
> By that time they were using WE equipment. They may not have had
> permission to show a close up due to patent constraints and such.
>
> I'd love to see how spiral-outs and the eccentric groove were made.
> particularly whether the latter was cut or molded in. (This is a special
> curiosity of mine on Victor and HMV records from 1924 until the mid-30s
> or so, when the pair of eccentric grooves were different diameters
> depending on where the music ended.)
>
> MS
>
>
>